


i^°^ 




• I •» 











V*^^ 


























^'%. V 



I > « • » ^^v ri^ • • • * ^^-ik 



% '<^- 



^o^.c^^ ^ 






• I ^ 



'<c^c: 



ULf, <?• V* .1*°- ^ 4? .'iiai:* ■> V , 













MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



COURSE OF LECTURES 



DELIVERED AT THE REQUEST OF THE 



CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY, 



WITH AN EXPLANATORY PAPER 

BY THE RIGHT REVEREND 

C. J. ELLICOTT, D.D., 

LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL. 



NEW YORK: 

ANSON D. R RANDOLPH AND CO., 

770. BROADWAY. 
MDCCCLXXI. 



\ 



0^^ 



^ ~ ^h 



Issued in this Country 

by special arra7ige7netit with the English Publishers^ 

Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton. 



PREFACE. 



The following Lectures, delivered at the request of 
the Christian Evidence Society, are now, for the con- 
venience of the reader, gathered together into one 
volume, and earnestly commended to his serious 

consideration. 

A short account of the general designs of the 

Society, of the plan of the Lectures, and the 

reasons for their appearing in a different order from 

that in which they were delivered, will be found in 

an explanatory paper which the Bishop of Gloucester 

and Bristol has been kind enough to draw up at 

the request of the Committee. Though placed, as 

last written, at the end of the volume, the attention of 

the reader should be early directed to this paper. 



vi PREFACE. 



The Committee take this opportunity of offering 
their best thanks to the eminent men who have 
found time, in the midst of their varied and laborious 
avocations, to lend such able and efficient service to 
the great cause in hand, — the maintenance of the 
truth of the Christian Revelation. 



HARROWBY, 

Chairman of Committee. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
DESIGN IN NATURE I 

By the Most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of 
York. 

PANTHEISM 33 

By the Rev. J. H. Rigg, D.D., Principal of Westminster 
Training College. 

POSITIVISM 79 

By the Rev. W. Jackson, M.A., F.S.A., late Fellow of 
Worcester College, Oxford. 

SCIENCE AND REVELATION 1 39 

By the Very Rev. R. Payne Smith, D.D., Dean of 
Canterbury ; late Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford. 

THE NATURE AND VALUE OF THE MIRACULOUS TESTI- 
MONY TO CHRISTIANITY 1 79 

By the Rev. John Stoughton, D.D. ' 

THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION . .229 

By the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Carlisle. 



viii CONTENTS. 



Page 
THE ALLEGED HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD 
AND NEW TESTAMENTS, AND THE LIGHT THROWN 
ON THEM BY MODERN DISCOVERIES . . .265 

By the Rev. George Rawlinson, M,A., Camden Pro- 
fessor of Ancient History, Oxford. 

MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY . . . 305 

By the Rev. Charles Row, M.A,, of Pembroke College, 
Oxford. 

THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES . 36 1 

By the Rev. Stanley Leathes, M.A., Professor of 
Hebrew, King's College. 

Christ's teaching and influence on the world . 409 
By the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Ely. 

the completeness and adequacy of the evidences 

of christianity 457 

By the Rev. Canon Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter; 
Preacher at Lincoln's Inn. 

EXPLANATORY PAPER 503 

By the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Gloucester 
AND Bristol. 

NOTES . ' 529 



DESIGN IN NATURE. 

BY THE MOST REVEREND. 

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK. 



DESIGN IN NATURE. 



" All things are full of God/' said the father of Greek 
philosophy. " We have no need of the hypothesis of God/* 
said a modern French astronomer. It is with the latter 
saying, which is descriptive of the attitude of modem 
science at this time, that the present address will have to 
do. Atheism no doubt exists ; but far more common is the 
mode of' thinking which would dispense with all questions 
about the Divine nature in dealing with the world and its 
phenomena j which considers that the introduction of 
the name of God into scientific research, complicates what 
is simple, obscures the rules of observation, introduces con- 
troversies that are useless to science, restrains the free 
course of inductive reasoning by an apprehension of con- 
sequences, and entangles physical inquiry which leads to 
sure and clear results, with mental and with spiritual 
inquiry which have produced nothing but disputation. 
Those who hold such views would think it unphilosophical 

3 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



to deny, just as they would regard it to affirm, the existence 
of God. But the popular mind is not equal to nice dis- 
tinctions; and it seems almost the same thing to most 
people to deny the existence of God as to exclude the 
thought of Him when exploring His creation. 

I am not without hope that a few words delivered here 
upon " the argument from design," as it is called, may tend 
to diminish the growing estrangement between science and 
religion, and at the same time to revindicate for religion 
her legitimate share in matters of scientific interest. 

I may undertake that the subject, however unworthily 
treated in other respects, shall be discussed without bitter- 
ness, and with a fitting respect for those who have done so 
much for physical science during the present generation. 

It is necessary to sketch in a few sentences that field of 
creation with which the argument from design has to do. 
The world presents to us four kingdoms or classes of facts. 
One of these, and the first in point of order, is the mineral 
kingdom. A few so-called elements, as metals, earthy 
bases, and the like, acted upon by certain forces, knov/n to 
us as gravitation, motion, heat, electricity, magnetism, 
chemical affinity, have formed the mountain and the valley, 
the wind and the clouds, the sea margin and the cave ; in a 
word, all the grand substructure on which the higher kingdoms 
are to take their places. Modern science has discovered 

4 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



however, that these physico-chemical forces are interchangeable 
or convertible ; that retarded motion turns to heat, as in the 
railway break, that heat generates electricity, and the elec- 
tric current magnetises the iron round which it passes. Not 
oniy ihis, but each force generates a certain equivalent of 
another — so much and no more ; and no force is lost, though 
a force may pass from an active to a potential state. For 
example, two tuns of water are raised by evaporation from 
the sea, and one of them falls in rain in a valley drained by 
a river, and in its downward motion back to the sea it will 
turn the water-wheel, lift the tilt-hammer, bear the barge 
swiftly in its current, leap over the rocky ledge a foaming 
cataract, and in all these it is only sending back a portion 
of the force which was spent upon its evaporation ; and the 
real source of all this work is, and must be, the sun's heat. 
And ere the water rests again in the sea it will have 
accounted for the whole of the force, neither less nor more, 
that had operated upon it ; part of it in friction on its bed 
and in consequent heat ; part of it in tasks imposed by hu- 
man skill. The other tun of water shall fall into some land- 
locked tarn, high in the hills, where it cannot at once render 
back its force in work or duty, but the force is there, held 
in suspense or in reserve. Water lifted from the sea level 
to the valley of the Engadine, a mile higher, has used much 
of the Sim's heat ; it will restore that heat or some equivalent 

S 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



force, as soon as you make a way for it to the sea level 
again ; and it will have parted with all the force, neither 
more nor less, which raised it to that height. That forces 
are convertible, and tliat whether converted or not they 
are conserved, so that nothing is lost, are propositions demon- 
strated. It is not, I believe, demonstrated, but it is a probable 
supposition, that all forces are but one force manifested in 
different modes. 

Then as to the material elements on which these forces 
work"; the hydrogen, carbon, iron, lime, and the like, the name 
of elements must be held to mean no more than that they 
have not as yet been resolved into simpler substances. Of 
their ultimate composition we know nothing. They may be 
so many modifications of an ultimate matter ; but whether 
this ultimate matter exists, whether it be, as modern mate- 
rialists tell us with such confidence, eternal and indestructi- 
ble, whether impenetrability be one of its properties, whether 
it be not a kind of polar opposite to the physico-chemical 
forces, and engendered with them, so that in a different 
universe, with other forces at work, there must have 
been different elements, these are all questions of mere 
speculation, incapable of proof. The physical enquirer has 
bound himself to consider only the facts which he can 
observe ; and when he tells us that matter is eternal, and 
that therefore creation is impossible, he is deserting the 



DESIGN IN NATURE. 



ground where alone he is strong. Bishop Berkele5^s and 
Collier^s denial that matter truly exists is quite as probable 
as this affirmation. But both alike are speculative guesses 
and not science. 

There is a second kingdom to add to the first. The 
world is not a mere agglomeration of rocks and mountains, 
seas and lakes. Before the physical forces had completed 
their work, a new force had been added to them ; that of 
life. The bare rocks became clothed with living moss. In 
marshy places, warm and moist, a rich vegetation grew and 
decayed. Along the slopes the interlacing roots of grasses 
detained the particles of soil which would otherwise have 
been w^ashed down to some lower bed. The vegetable 
world, with thousands of varieties, clothed and adorned the 
stony earth. England's greatness in the present was taken 
order for in those ages when her coal measures were 
formed out of the forests which grew rank and died in a 
climate different in all respects from that which forms the 
subject of our daily animadversion. 

Third in order comes the Animal Kingdom. I do not 
attempt to define life, whether animal or vegetable, with 
exactness. Every one has failed in that attempt. As a 
rough description of animal life, it may, perhaps, suffice to 
say that the living being is one endowed with sensation and 
spontaneous motion, of which each of the parts contributes 

7 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



something to the continuance of the whole, and is in turn 
preserved or defended by the whole. If those who find 
fault with this, look for another definition in Dr. Whewell's 
comprehensive work,-'' they will find my excuse in the 
variety and the inadequacy of the definitions there collected. 
The animal life spread out over the globe from the first is 
profuse, is beautiful and various. The oolitic limestone and 
the white chalk are almost wholly made up of shells of Fora- 
minifera. On the river Columbia is a bed of clay 500 feet 
thick, which consists largely of the shells of Diatoms, if, in- 
deed, these are to be ranked in the animal kingdom. The 
shells of the Foraminifera, which can only be examined by 
the microscope, exhibit wonderful variety and beauty. Still 
more remarkable in this respect are the Polycystina, whose 
shells, as figured in Mr. Ponton's book, recall censers and 
vases, jewelled crosses and stars, pendants and tripods, such 
as a London goldsmith would do well to reproduce. Until 
the microscope was invented no eye can have explored this 
wonderful dust. The shells of both these humble tribes, the 
Foraminifera and Polycystina resemble the shells of other 
animals much higher in the scale of organization ; but nearly 
as they are related in organization to each other, the forms are 
very different, and each in itself presents a wonderful diversity 

* " Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences." 
8 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



of forms. In higher families of animals there are the same 
characters. The globe teems with life m earth, and air, 
and water. If you will permit me, so early in my argument, 
to speak of the Maker of them all, I will say that the 
creative power is inexhaustible in invention, both of useful 
and beautiful parts. And in the ceaseless activity of these 
creatures, great and small, we recognise the physical happi- 
ness which accompanies so much life. It is a chorus of 
thanksgiving and praise, from pool and jungle, from tree- 
top and soft grass, from the creatures that revel in the life 
that God has given them. 

In demanding the right to regard]man asthe fourth kingdom 
of nature, I am aware that some may demur to the claim. 
No doubt he must take rank in the kingdom of the animals, 
by reason of his identity with animals in all the vital func- 
tions. Disparaging things have been said of his brain j and 
Moleschott has remarked, I think, that all its finest things 
are but modified phosphorus after all. " No phosphorus, 
no thinking ! " The slight projection on the outer margin 
of the ear has lately assumed portentous proportions. The 
possession of that precious relic, which has turned up suddenly 
like the locket of the long lost child in a stimulating 
novel, proves our kinship to the Simian race, from some 
balder specimens of which we are supposed to have de- 
scended, and gives us a place on an unsuspected family tree. 

9 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



But, after all that has been said by the naturalists to teach 
us humility, there do remain some facts, which entitle man 
to a separate place, to one at least of which the modern 
school have given greater prominence than before. They are 
these. Man can control nature. He can read nature and under- 
stand it. He has a power of self-regulation, which we call 
conscience. And he can and does think much about God. 
As to the power of man to control nature, I prefer to em- 
ploy the words of Mr. Wallace, one of the first to put for- 
ward what is called " the law of natural selection," who will 
not be suspected of claiming any transcendental place or 
privilege for man. " With a naked and unprotected body," 
he says, man's intelligence " gave him clothing against the 
varying inclemencies of the seasons. Though unable to 
compete with the deer in swiftness, or with the wild bull in 
strength, it has given him weapons wherewith to capture and 
overcome both. Though less capable than most other 
animals, of living on the herbs and the fruits which unaided 
nature supplies, this wonderful faculty taught him to govern 
and direct nature to his own benefit, and to make her 
produce food for him when and where he pleased. From 
the moment when the first skin was used as a covering, 
when the first rude spear was formed to assist in the chase, 
the first seed sown or root planted, a grand revolution was 
effected in nature, a revolution which in all the previous 

lO 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



ages of the world had had no parallel, for a being had arisen 
who was no longer necessarily subject to change with the 
changing universe, a being who was, in some degree, 
superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control 
and regulate her action, and could keep himself in harmony 
with her, not by a change in body, but by an advance in 
mind. Here, then, we see the true grandeur and dignity of 
man. On this view of his special attributes we may admit 
that even those who claim for him a position and an order 
a class or a sub-kingdom by himself, have some reason on 
their side. He is indeed a being apart, since he is not 
influenced by the great laws which irresistibly modify all 
other organic beings. Nay, more, this victory which he 
has gained for himself gives him a directing influence over 
other existences. Man has not only escaped natural selec- 
tion himself, but he is actually able to take away some of 
that power from nature which before his appearance she 
universally exercised. We can anticipate the time when 
the earth will produce only cultivated plants and domestic 
animals ; when man's selection shall have supplanted 
natural selection j and when the ocean will be the only 
domain in which that power can be exerted, which for 
countless cycles of ages ruled supreme over the earth."^* 

* Mr, Wallace, in the "Anthropological Journal," I864; see also 
LuLbock's " Prehistoric Times," last chapter. 

IX 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



Thus eloquently and forcibly speaks Mr. Wallace ; and I do 
not stop now to criticise the exaggeration of language which 
treats thelaw of natural selection as supreme ruler of the earth. 
Let me say a few words next upon man's power to reflect 
on, and to understand nature. For this was the second 
mark by which man was distinguished from the animal crea- 
tion, with which he has so much in common. 

Man alone is capable of an unselfish interest in the world 
around him \ that is, an interest that does not bear imme- 
diately on his bodily wants. How far he has carried this 
interest, let modern science bear witness. The common 
feat of foretelling all the eclipses of sun and moon for a 
given year, is performed for our almanack yearly, without 
exciting surprise or gratitude. Yet it means that man can 
so follow the heavenly bodies in their path, for years and 
years to come, for all the years that are gone, that he can 
tell, without fear of error, on what day the cone of shadow 
thrown by the sun-lighted earth into space, shall sweep over 
the face of the moon and blot out her light, completely or a 
little. But this is an old triumph, hardly worth quoting, but 
for its aptness to impress all kinds of minds. A clerk in one 
of our public offices, using only such leisure as official work 
allowed, has told us lately wonders about the composition of 
the sun ; and here in London, armed with a little instru- 
ment (the spectroscope), this distinguished man has been 

12 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



able to ascertain that in yonder photosphere the same ele- 
ments are found which the chemist seeks and finds in 
the crust of our little earth. What proofs can be more 
convincing of the fitness of man to play his part in the 
scene in which he is placed ? His senses are adapted 
to the facts he is to observe ; his eye to light, his ear 
to sonorous vibrations, his touch to resistance and to 
weight. But the naked organ soon falls short of his 
wishes. And soon the microscope unfolds the beautiful 
forms of the Polycystina shells, the minute fibril of the 
muscle, and the components of the blood of life. The tele- 
scope brings near the world of stars, and resolves the bright 
mist into clusters of distinct orbs. The balance weighs 
quantities of matter too small for the touch to appreciate. 
And lastly, the spectroscope takes the picture, so to speak, of 
chemical phenomena too distant to be realised by these 
means ; and so the composition of the heavenly bodies, 
about which the most sanguine observer twenty years ago 
would have admitted that we should never know anything 
firmer than conjecture, is already the subject of exact ob- 
servation. 

The names of Homer, Plato, and Shakspeare remind us 
how marvellously the world is imaged and reproduced in the 
minds of some great men, and of the share which we smaller 
men can take in their work by an admiring sympathy. A 

13 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



production of art, whether Uterary, pictorial, or plastic, is a 
creation. The things of Troy were not so touching nor so 
grand in their reality as they became in the form which tlie 
poet gave them. Legend enters largely into the stories of 
Macbeth and Hamlet. The histories are shadowy, but the 
plays are substantial ; they contain some touch of truth. Old 
and young read them, and lend to the author all their feelings 
to work on as he mil. Weigh this fact well. It seems to 
me to show so plainly that man's constitution has been fitted 
by foresight and preparation for the place in earth that he 
was to fill. 

Supposing that Moleschott was right in his startling aphor- 
ism, " Without phosphorus there is no thought," what a 
wonder are we forced to recognise here. The rage of Achilles, 
the death of Socrates, the resolute wickedness of Lady 
Macbeth, the character of her husband, so weak in his crime, 
so grand in his remorse and ruin ; the refined and gentle 
Hamlet, forced by a preternatural command to assume the 
character of an avenger; to all these the presence of 
phosphorus in the brain is indispensable. How comes so 
small a cause to work such grand effects. It is sufficiently 
wonderful to hear Joachim discourse eloquent music upon 
the simplest of instruments, a violin ; take away the violin 
and substitute a bit of wood ; if the music still continues, 
what was before a wonderful exercise of skill is now miraculous, 

14 



DESIGN IN NATURE. 



If great thoughts are but phosphorus burnt in the closed stove 
of a poet's brain, I am more ready than ever to admire that 
creative wisdom which could bring this out of that, which 
:ould so dispense with ordinary means in His highest pro- 
ductions. But the aphorism is not true as it stands. I 
believe there is no free phosphorus in the brain. ''Without 
time, no thought ; without oxygen, no thought ; without 
water, no thought." All these are true, and they import a 
well-known fact, that man who thinks is a creature in a 
material world, and that certain forms of matter are need- 
ful to his existence as an organised being. ^* 

*' Two things are awful to me," said Kant, "the starry firma- 
ment and the sense of responsibility in man." In his "Meta- 
physics of Ethics" he has treated this sense of responsibility 
with singular logical power. It is one of the marks that 
separate man from all other creatures. No doubt this 
principle has allowed men to come to very wrong and absurd 
conclusions. Because the savage practises cannibalism, 
and knows no rules of chastity but those which flow from 
the husband's right of property in the wife, it is inferred that 
the savage has no moral sense. It would be as fair to infer 
that because England once traded in slaves, fought cocks, 
baited bulls, and oppressed the native races in India and 

* Molescliott, ''Circulation of Life:" Letter XVIIL, with Liebig's 
opinion there quoted. 



DESIGN IN NATURE. 



her colonies, therefore there was no sense of right and 
wrong in England. It is for the existence of the principle 
that I contend, and not for its perfect education and en- 
lightenment. The principle is that something is right to will 
and to do, and something is not right. The existence of 
the principle is proved if the poor savage of whom I spoke 
would consider his manhood disgraced by fleeing, even for 
his life's sake, before the foe, or by suffering one cry to es- 
cape him under the tortures, wherewith his captors are doing 
him to death. The education of this principle is a different 
matter ; no one could say that even now his conscience was 
completely educated. " So act that your principle of action 
would bear to be made a law for the whole world, "'^ is a noble 
maxim j but it requires knowledge and light, as well as right 
intention. If you twit us with the fact that men have been 
cruel, impure, capricious, and absurd in their conduct, we 
answer that they had still a right and a wrong. One who 
has the sense of sight may find himself compelled to live 
in some narrow cleft or ravine, where there is little to see, 
but the sense is there still. The bathing-men at 
Pfeffers, -with the earth closed almost over their heads, 
see little of the scenery of Switzerland : but they have eyes 
not the less. We are claiming for men now, not the fine 



*Kant, "Metaphysics of Etbics." 
Id 



DESIGN IN NATURE. 



sweep of moral prospect, but the moral sense of sight ; and 
this is never wanting. Upon this sense every artifice has 
been used to make it look like something else \ ^'' for until it 
can be so transformed, it is a powerful witness for another 
world than this. The commonest explanation is that it is 
only a principle of enlightened self-interest. Study it for 
yourself in the savage, in the little child j you will find that 
these two principles run on different lines. 

The last mark of man, that distinguishes him from all 
animals is, that he believes in God. One half the human 
race at this moment profess some creed in which God is the 
great first cause, the Creator and Governor of the world. 
Of the other half, hardly any are quite without religion. 
" Obliged as I am," says M. Quatrefages, in words which 
I have had occasion to quote elsewhere,! "even by my edu- 
cation, to pass in review the races of men, I have sought 
for atheism in the lowest and in the highest, but nowhere 
have I met with it, except in an individual, or at most in 
some school of men, more or less known, as we have seen 
in Europe in the last century, and as we see at the present 
day. Everywhere and always the masses of the people have 
escaped it." But for my present argument it is not neces- 

*See, for example, Renouvier, "Science de la Morale," 1869. 

t "Limits of PMlosopliical Enquiry." 1868. 

17 2 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



sary to insist that a right beHef in God prevails. There is 
a behef in God, and it cannot have come from experience 
or observation of visible facts. You may lower the position 
of man, by comparing him to the apes, and by chemical analy- 
sis of his brain; all the more wonderful is it that a creature 
in such sorry case should pretend to hold communion with 
the divine. His feet are in the earthy clay, but his head 
is lifted up towards heaven. Heir to a hundred maladies, 
the sport of a hundred passions, holding on this life, so 
chequered in its complexion, but for a few days, this crea- 
ture cries out of his trouble : " God exists ; and he can see 
and hear me." 

Man, if I have proved my position, stands quite alone at 
the head of the kingdoms of nature, alone in his power of 
controlling it, alone in his appreciation of its beauty, alone 
in the self-government of conscience, the first of all the crea- 
tures of God, to pronounce the name of Him who had made 
all things, in a world which for ages had been blind to its 
Maker, and thankless because blind. 

Now it has become, and will probably continue to be, a 
question of the deepest interest to mankind, how these four 
kingdoms came into being. And at present there is a ten- 
dency towards a theory purely material and mechanical. It 
is so in Germany, the country of Buchner, Vogt, and 
Moleschott; it is so in France, where Comte and Littre 

iS 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



have written ; it is so here in England, where it is needless 
to quote distinguished names. I purpose, in the remainder 
of this lecture, to attempt an interpretation of the facts 
before us, quite different from this prevalent notion; and 
also to show how vicious and how inadequate in a scientific 
point of view the system known as materialism appears to 
be. The time is all too short for such a purpose : but any 
address like this can only aim to scatter germs of thought, 
not to present a system. 

That the creation was gradual, appears alike from the 
account of the Bible and from scientific observation. Matter 
and motion must have existed before the ball of 
earth vv^as formed; and the physico-chemical forces 
must have been in full play when the first lichen clothed the 
rocks, or the first plants were formed in the sea. The first 
appearance of life on the globe was a mighty step in crea- 
tion, and from this point the question of design becomes a 
very urgent one. Observe : the plant world is a new world, 
with a series of wonders all its own. There was nothing in 
the heat of the sun, nor in the earth's motion or magnetic 
currents, to give any promise or presage of the marvels of 
the forest. Supposing that we admit that these were evolved 
by law, that is to say, that as a matter of fact plants only 
appeared where certain conditions of light and heat and 
moisture combined to favour them, and that wherever these 

19 



DESIGN IN NATURE. 



conditions were combined they never failed to appear. The 
question next arises whether matter and force evolved 
them from their own inherent nature, or force and matter 
were created with the intention to produce them, so that 
the plant was intended and prepared then when the other 
forces began to stir the formless void. Is the plant world 
the accidental or necessary outcome of the forces that made 
the mineral world ? or must we say that it bears marks of 
design ? Here we must observe that it is a wider and richer 
world than that which preceded it : more full by far of 
forms of beauty and grace, each of them sustained by a 
vascular system of which the mineral world affords no parallel. 
You stand before the gnarled and twisted oak that rises 
out of the feathering ferns ; you never think that this giant 
of two centuries, endued with a certain power of self- 
protection against the storms of two hundred years, is an 
accidental product. It is so grandly strong, so richly 
clothed with a myriad leaves, alike but yet in something 
different each from each. The cattle count upon its friendly 
shade ; the fowls of the air make it their resting-place. This 
a result of certain motions in the universe and certain 
properties of matter, not designed at all, foreseen by no 
eye? To no one would such a thought naturally occur. 
The world, full in its first stage of marks of order and pur- 
pose, shows more of the same marks in its second and 

20 



DESIGN IN NATURE. 



more complicated state. The change that has taken place 
is not towards confusion and exhaustion from unforeseen 
defects in mechanism, but a higher development. The 
mineral kingdom was wonderful ; that it should be able to 
clothe itself with a mantle of verdure, and pass into another 
kingdom much more complex, heightens the wonder. But 
then comes the further change, the pouring out of animal 
life upon the globe. Was this too an inevitable consequence 
of physical forces ? All the animal creation teems with 
marks of purpose. Consider only some of the contrivances 
by which the fowls of the air are fitted for their peculiar 
life. Describing a night of extreme coldness, the poet says : 

" The owl, for all her feathers, is a-cold." 
That warm covering of the bird must be portable as well as 
warm ; it weighs about an ounce and a half. But the covering 
of birds would be useless to them if the showers to which they 
must be exposed were absorbed by the plumage, so that it 
became a heavy clinging mass. An oily secretion makes it 
waterproof j we have all seen the duck free itself by one shake 
from every trace of its recent bath. The heavy skeleton 
that befits pedestrian creatures, would disable the bird from 
flight ; so it is provided with tubes of thin bone, surround- 
ing a cavity filled with air. Its pinions must be light as 
well as strong ; observe how the light barbs of the feather 
have roughened edges so that they form one strong con- 

21 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



tinuous surface, almost impervious to the air which they 
strike. The air in the bones of birds and in other cavities 
of the body, heated too by an inner warmth much greater 
than that of man, contributes something to their buoyancy. 
Their speed and endurance are enormous. It is said that 
the swallow's flight is ninety miles an hour. One long 
stretch across the North Sea brings the sea-fowl from 
Norway to Flamborough Head; they rest for a short 
time after this flight, and pass inland, not the worse 
for their exploit. You may infer from the beak of a 
bird its habits and its food. The bill of a woodpecker is a 
pointed tool, tipped with hardest horn, to break open the 
bark of the tree for insects. The flat bill of the duck has 
plates of horn at the side ; an excellent instrument for strain- 
ing off the water and retaining the food. The bill of the 
snipe is long, and narrow, and sensitive, to pierce the marshy 
ground, and feel after its food. We might go on for hours 
multiplying such instances, and from everj^ part of the field 
of creation. 

Now, any mind in its natural state knows that in human 
works such adaptations could only proceed from contrivance, 
and is \Aalling to regard these in the same way as proofs of 
design in creation. The physicist has to tutor himself to a 
different view. All these things are evolutions, under pres- 
sure of circumstances, of the original forces of creation. For 

22 



DESIGN IN NATURE. 



example, out of certain birds tenanting marshy places, one 
has a somewhat larger beak, and this gives him an advantage 
in piercing the ground for food ; and so his share of food 
is larger, and his strength and courage greater, and he 
has- a freer choice of a mate ; and so the long beak grows 
longer in the next generation, and the grandson's beak is 
longer than the son's, from the same causes ; and thus the 
law works, until in course of time there stands confessed a 
new species — a perfect snipe. Is the scientific theory better 
in this case than the popular? It is not. It does not account 
for the facts so well. But is not our belief that God made 
the fowl of the air with fitting instruments for a peculiar life 
because He saw that it was good, and wished all portions of 
His varied earth to be the scene of the joy and energy of 
appropriate tenants, a mere hypothesis ? The worship 
of God is universal, and exists without any explicit 
opinion that He is the Creator, the first Cause. Because 
you are able to conceive of Him, and are willing to accept 
Him as the Ruler of your will and conscience, He must 
exist. Does this seem too rapid an assumption? Consider 
the alternative. If He exists not, the sound of worship has 
gone up from all lands in vain, and in vain have all good 
men consecrated their lives to an obedience to the law of 
duty. Were such deceit felt to be possible, a darkness that 
might be felt would settle upon our spirits, and the hands 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



would indeed hang down, and the feeble knees be paralyzed, 
and a strict silence on all moral subjects become us best. 
But we must see with such eyes as God has given us ; and 
scepticism about faith and conscience is perhaps as un- 
profitable as scepticism about touch and sight. God exists 
then, it is assured to us by the common faith of mankind, 
by the highest law mthin ourselves. And as He exists, to 
Him, and to no other, must we assign the place of Creator. 
There cannot be two Gods. I cannot give my conscience to 
one as its guide, and adore another for the wdsdom of the 
universe God exists then, and His existence is not merely 
assumed in order to account for marks of design in nature. 
And we maintain that the easier supposition is also the 
truer. These marks of purpose are what they appear to 
be, tokens of the -wisdom of God. "Thou hast made 
heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their host, the earth 
and all things that are therein, the sea and all that is therein, 
and thou preservest them all."* 

If I were to venture to express in a few sentences the be- 
lief of a man of ordinary education upon this subject I 
should say that God alone is and can be the first cause of 
this universe, the mover of its motion, the giver of its 
life. The wise purposes which shine forth for us in 

* Nehem. ix. 6. 
24 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



nature, were in the mind of God from the first act of 
creation. In saying that He has wrought by laws, we do not 
detract from His power ; we seem rather to enhance it to 
our minds in attributing to Him constancy as well as wis- 
dom. A law is not a restraint ; it is a fixed manner of work- 
ing. To say of a painter that he never produces any but 
fine works, does not affirm that he is less free than an inferior 
artist; just because producing bad work is no power or 
privilege but a defect. And so, when we admit that God 
works by law, and expect to find the same spectrum from 

the sun's rays, which we have once made with our own 
prism, at every time and in every place where the 

sun's light shines, and so on, we do not narrow the power 
of the Great Artificer, unless it can be shown that caprice 
is a privilege and a good. The subject of miracles is not 
here to be discussed ; I will only observe that they are pre- 
sented to us as parts of a great purpose for the good of 
man; and that our Lord refused, when He was tempted, 
to work wonders out of wilfulness, or only to astonish. 
The extreme jealousy of scientific men of admitting any 
allusion to theology, in connection with the course of nature, 
proceeds from erroneous conceptions of God. Mr. Wallace, 
whom I have already quoted with respect, is ready to admit 
that the Creator works in the beginning as the founder of the 
laws on Vt^ich the world is to proceed; but he is afraid of 

25 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



admitting that there has been continual interference and re- 
arrangement of details."^ But this eminent naturalist at- 
tributes to us a conception of the Most High which we do 
not hold, nay, which we energetically reject. If the laws 
were wise and good, whence would come the need of inter- 
ference or re-arrangement ? Who are we that we should 
bid God speak once, and forbid Him twice to speak ? The 
laws of nature are God's laws, and God's laws are His 
utterance of Himself through the speech of nature. God is the 
same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and so His laws remain 
the same. They are, if I miy say so without irreverence, the 
veil and vesture over the form of God, too bright in itself 
for us to look on ; they take their outline from Him who is 
beneath them. You may continue your researches in full 
confidence that the laws will stand sure, not because you 
have the slightest guarantee as a man of science that these 
laws will never be interfered with ; such a guarantee you 
have on your ov/n principles no right to ask. You are to 
observe that the facts are so ; that they shall eternally be so 
is not for you, for that is all beyond experience. But the wis- 
dom that made the laws needs not to revise its work, and 
erase and insert and amend its code. In the days of crea- 
tion God saw that it was good ; the eye that so approved it 



* See Duke of Argyll's " Reign of Law." 
26 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



changes not. Until the purpose that runs through the ages 
is completed the laws will stand sure. But each new king- 
dom of nature has introduced a change amounting to a revo- 
lution, which neither the theologian nor the naturalist 
regards as an interference or a caprice. When the principle 
of plant-life was introduced, the mineral world became the 
material on which the plant-life worked ; it gathered into 
itself the lower elements, carbon, silica, nitrogen, and used 
them as means of its own organic life. The plant partook of 
the nature of the class below it, whilst it dominated and used 
that class. This same took place when animal life was intro- 
duced. Thebeautifulplantsbecome the material whereon the 
animal life worked, the food whereby it sustained itself. It 
was the same when man was added, in whom instinct is re- 
placed by reason, and ethical action supervenes over action 
by impulse and appetite. Each of these kingdoms has 
much in common with that which is below it. The animal 
is in many respects a plant ; for the diatomaceous creatures 
one knows hardly in which kingdom to find their place. The 
man is an animal in much, and perhaps his animal instincts 
play a larger part in the world's history and in his own develop- 
ment than we are wont to allow. But each higher step brings 
in something wholly new. "An animal," says Hegel, "is a 
miracle for the vegetable world." Each step is a revolution 
in one point of view ; but then the lower state prepared itself 

27 



DESIGN IN NATURE. 



for the higher, prophesied, so to speak, of its coming, 
and the higher seated itself so easily on the throne prepared 
for it, that we do not wonder to find it there. You call it 
evolution ; we call it a creative act. We think that God 
exists, and if He acts anywhere it must be in this, the uni- 
verse of things. E^ kvhs TO. irdvTa ylyvecrdai is an old Saying 
long before Christianity. But you and we may work by the 
same calculus and rules of observation. The facts are the 
same, the interpretation of what is behind them is different. 
Nor need we deny that the principle of which Mr. Wallace 
spoke as " supreme in the world," has its truth and its use in 
explaining the facts of creation. It never raised an inert 
mineral mass into a vegetable organism ; it never raised a plant 
into an animal. Itnever raised anapeinto a man. No facts have 
yet been produced that go to prove any such leaps, and 
if our logic is to be improved in anything by the light of ex- 
perience, it is in this, that facts should be recorded and 
generalised, but not assumed. But that climatic con- 
ditions, and the struggles for life, have modified species, and 
worked out new varieties, or new species, we may fearlessly 
admit j it is one more proof, perhaps, that the world is a 
meet school and training ground for the creatures placed in 
it for discipline. But a law is not a god ; it never ruled 
supreme ; never was other than one precept out of many in 
the Divine code of the world. 

28 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



It has become the fashion with some naturalists to speak 
of God as " the Unknowable." Mr. Martineau has finely- 
observed, somewhere, that this name is self-contradictory ; 
for we affirm by the use of it that we know so much, that 
He cannot be known. I go much further. It assumes the 
existence of God, and in the same breath separates us from 
Him for ever. Theologians have ever been ready to confess 
that God cannot be known in His own essence to creatures 
such as we. " Lo ! these are parts of His ways : but how 
little a portion is known of Him ? but the thunder of His 
power who can understand } '"^' An uninspired writer speaks 
the same language as the inspired. " For us that are men 
to talk about divine things is as when the unmusical dis- 
course of music or civilians of strategy.^'! But shall 
we then sit down in despair, and no more look up to God ? 
We shall be untrue to our own best instincts ; we shall not 
have used all our means of enlightenment. I grant that the 
mere contemplation of God in nature is not enough. Like 
the pillar of cloud of old, it is at once light and darkness ; 
a light to us in contemplating the book of nature, a darkness 
to our hearts, shut in with their own sins and sorrows. 
Naturalists have never done justice, as it seems to me, to 

* Job xxvi. 14. 

t Plutarch, "De Justitia." 
29 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



the most important facts of man's nature. Not only can he 
study nature, but he can act in it and upon it. And this 
power of action assures him of his freedom. Possessed of 
this gift, that places him a little lower than the angels, he 
knows that he can use it either way. He may follow his 
own foolish vanity, his own evil wishes, and set up for his 
own law, and be his own God ; or he may return to Him, 
whence he came out, and offer to God the homage of his 
own will, of his love, and his obedience. To one who has 
performed this great act God is no more " the Unknowable." 
In the mutual commerce of two wills, two spirits, the 
finite and the infinite, the finite rises more and more, and 
sees more and more of Him who has m.anifested Himself to 
us in His creation of the world out of free love, in His crea- 
tion of a free being to rule in the same world, crowned with 
glory and honor, in His giving that free being a law of duty 
wherewith to rule himself, in His having planted in him 
hopes and longings that will be satisfied only in eternity. 

Yes j man is humble and low. By every organ, and by 
every fibre he is mated with some analogous creature in the 
brute world. He surpasses them in the variety of his ail- 
ments, and the profundity of his pains. He is part of a 
system, which naturalists tell us is hastening towards night 
and death ;* the motion of the power of nature tending plainly 



* Buchner. 
30 



DESIGN IN NA TURE. 



towards universal rest. But 

"Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, 
A being darldy wise and rudely great," 

he has that in him which unites him to another sphere. To 
be able to conceive of God at all ; to have within him a will 
and a power of worship, these make him one with God, 
and assure him against death and darkness. To deny one- 
self this privilege of viewing the earth in its relation to God, 
to shut out God artificially from that sphere where the 
natural understanding has always found Him without 
assistance, is a pedantry for which we shall surely suffer. 
God will find us out. There is often a certain irritation in 
those who would exclude Him from their sphere of view. 
They lose their philosophic calmness when they speak of 
religious things. These are the tokens of past conflicts and 
past quarrels, of a soul that might know more of God if it 
had not refused. God is reflected in the world, in the 
man's intelligence, in his conscience, in his will. "Whither 
shall I go from His presence?" we seem to be saying. It 
is better to be able to say, " Whom have I in heaven and 
earth but Thee?" 



31 



PANTHEISM. 



BY THE 



REV. J. H. RIGG, D.D., 

PRINCIPAL OF WESTMINSTER TRAINING COLLEGE. 



PANTHEISM. 



A HUNDRED years ago the controversy of Christianity in 
England was with Deism, and in France with Atheism ; 
while at that time the transcendental infidelity of Gennany 
was as yet undeveloped, and the name of Spinoza was 
nowhere held in honour. Now, however, deistic infidelity 
appears to be obsolete, and it is universally felt by those 
who have entered truly into the thought and controversies 
of the age, that the question for the present is between 
Christian Theism and that style of philosophy which recog- 
nises an impersonal divinity in all things. 

Deism grants too much to the Christian. If a man really 
believes in a living and personal God, a Divine Maker and 
Ruler of the universe, with a moral character and will, he 
finds it hard to deny the possibility and probability of a, 
revelation, and impossible to maintain the impossibility of 

35 



PANTHEISM. 



miracles. Having been obliged to yield thus far to the 
Christian argument, the deist is unable thereafter to with- 
stand the positive evidence in favour of Christianity. [More- 
over Deism is beset by the same difficulties in effect which 
surround the Christian revelation, without its lights, its con- 
solations, its blessings. The man, therefore, who rejects 
Christianity seldom finds his resting-place in Deism. He 
becomes a pantheist or an atheist. 

Naked atheism, however, is a repulsive creed. It is a 
heart-withering negation. It touches no sympathy; it sti- 
mulates no play of intellect ; under the deadly chill of its 
unlighted vacancy, imagination cannot breathe. There is 
nothing about it refined, or subtle, or profound. It is the 
barest and hardest form of infidelity, and has been professed 
by the coarsest minds. It demands no efi"ort to compre- 
hend its one universal negation and it taxes no skill to 
expound it. It is an arid and barren, a cold and dreary, 
hypothesis, which no genius, not even that of Lucretius, 
could make attractive. The old illustration is conclusive as 
to its absurdity. It would be immensely less monstrous to 
maintain that the Iliad, in its full perfection, might have 
been the product of the " fortuitous concourse " of the 
letters of the Greek alphabet, than that this infinitely won- 
derful and glorious universe is the result of the ''fortuitous 
concourse of atoms." Stark atheism, therefore, however it 

36 



PANTHEISM. 



may have flourished m the heartless and hopeless France 
of a hundred years ago, was never likely to take root in the 
soil of European scepticism as the alternative of Christianity. 
In England it has had very few votaries. Nor has atheism, 
as such, ever found favour in the land of Luther and 
Melancthon, the favourite soil of mysticism and pietism. 
English deism and Scottish scepticism did, indeed, produce 
potent effects in Germany a hundred years ago; but the 
result was neither deism, nor such scepticism as that of 
Hume, nor atheism, but a dreamy idealistic pantheism. 
And now Germany, with a disastrous fidelity, by an infusion 
into our literature of its pantheistic unbeHef, has repaid to 
Britain the debt which it contracted by its importation of 
English deism and Scottish scepticism. At the present 
moment a pantheistic philosophy is the philosophy in which 
unbelief for the most part invests itself in England. 

Hence the task which falls to me to-day cannot but be 
felt by myself to be one of very gra,ve importance. I could 
unfeignedly have wished that it had fallen into other and 
more competent hands. Perhaps, however, I may venture 
to claim two qualifications which may, in some measure, 
help to fit me for dealing with the subject on which I have 
to speak. One is, that the subject of Pantheism is one 
which has much and frequently exercised my thoughts for 
many years past, ever since I learnt from the writings of 

37 



PANTHEISM. 



Coleridge, Hare, and others the meaning of what Hare 
spoke of as the "fascination of Pantheism;" ever since I 
was led to the study of philosophy and its development, and 
especially of the thoughts of the early Greek wrestlers with 
the mysteries of being, of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonists, 
and of the modem thinkers of Germany, who have filled 
with transcendental exhalations of verbal dialectics the 
vacuum in speculation which had been created by the de- 
structive logic of Kant. The other qualification which I 
venture to claim for my task to-day is that I have some 
knowledge of the difficulties of thought and belief which may 
lead honest men to become pantheists ; that I understand 
the manner of thought of one who has become entangled 
in the mazy coil of pantheistic reasonings ; at all events, 
that I know that honest searchers after truth may reluctantly 
become intellectually pantheists, while yet their heart longs 
to retain faith and worship towards a personal God. If, 
therefore, one necessary condition of true success in argu- 
ment is an intellectual and, as far as possible, a moral 
sympathy with one's opponents, that condition, I believe, is 
fulfilled in my case. And I cannot but think that all 
Christian controversialists ought to feel a tender sympathy 
towards honest thinkers who are involved in the bewildering 
confusions of a philosophy which they do not love, even 
although they may, after many a struggle and in sadness of 

38 



PANTHEISM. 



heart, have succumbed at length to Pantheism as the only 
conclusion of controversy in which they are able to abide. 

My subject to-day is not the history of Pantheism, but its 
principles. The history could not be dealt with in one lec- 
ture ; the principles, I hope, may. And whatever may be 
the intellectual genesis, the descent and derivation, or the 
special character, of any particular form of Pantheism, all 
its forms will be found to coincide in certain respects. The 
semi-Hegelian of Oxford, and the pantheist who falls back 
on the lines of Mr. Herbert Spencer's speculations as his 
place of defence, may both be regarded as standing on 
common ground for the purpose of my present argument. 

In attempting a criticism of the principles of Pantheism, 
the first thing to be done is to obtain as clear an idea as 
possible of what is to be understood by Pantheism, as dis- 
tinguished from Theism on the one hand, and from Atheism 
on the other. There can be no doubt that the difficulties, 
both metaphysical and moral, which attach to the concep- 
tion of a personal God, the Creator and Governor of the 
universe, have, more than any other cause, constrained 
thoughtful men who have pondered the problem of the 
universe, to endeavour to escape from their perplexities and 
bewilderments by taking refuge in the notion of a diffiised 
impersonal divinity. And it must be confessed that these 
difficulties are so oppressive and so staggering to our incom- 

Z9 



PANTHEISM. 



petent human reason, that they might well tempt the mere 
reasoner, the mere logician, the mere metaphysician, to give 
up faith in a personal God, if so to do were not really to 
involve one's self in more than equivalent difficulties of the 
very same class, besides many other difficulties, and in truth 
contradictions, both intellectual and also moral, which are 
involved in the pantheistic hypothesis. That the alter- 
native is such as I have now stated, that the pantheistic 
hypothesis is necessarily beset with such difficulties and 
contradictions, will in part be shown by the inquiry which, 
as I have intimated, must needs come first of all in the 
criticism I am to attempt. An investigation of the mean- 
ing of Pantheism, of the characteristic idea proper to the 
intermediate hypothesis which rejects equally A-Theism and 
Theism, will open to view the metaphysical difficulties and 
contradictions involved in the hypothesis. I shall after- 
wards try to show the incompatibility of the principles of 
Pantheism with the true principles of natural science. 
The moral considerations belonging to the Christian con- 
troversy with Pantheism I shall reserve till the final stage in 
my argument. 

Pantheism agrees with atheism in its denial of a personal 
Deity. Its divinity of the universe is a divinity without a 
will and without conscious intelligence. In what respect, 
then, does Pantheism really differ from atheism ? If we 

40 



PANTHEISM. 

eliminate from our idea of the divinity of the universe all 
consciousness^ all sympathy, all will, what sort of a divinity 
remains, what sense of a present and real divine power 
is left to the man that shrinks from atheism? Atheism 
denies that in, or over, or with nature there is anything 
whatever besides nature. Does not Pantheism do the very 
same? If not, what is there, let the pantheist tell us, 
in nature besides nature ? What sort of a divinity is that 
which is separate from conscious intelligence and from 
voluntary will or power ? Is it said that though there be no 
Deity in the universe, yet there is a harmony, a unity, an 
unfolding plan and purpose, which must be recognised as 
transcending all limitation, as unerring, inexhaustible, in- 
finite, and therefore as divine ? Let us ask ourselves what 
unity that can be which is above mere nature, as such, 
and yet stands in no relation to a personal Lord and Ruler 
of the universe j what plan and purpose that can be which 
is the product of no intelligence, which no mind ever 
planned ; what infinite and unerring harmony can mean, 
when there is no harmonist to inspire and regulate the life 
and movement of the whole. Do not the points of dis- 
tinction which the pantheist makes between his philosophy 
and the bald tenets of the atheist amount in efi"ect to so 
many admissions that the facts of the universe cannot be 
stated, that the phenomena of nature cannot be described, 

4i 



PANTHEISM. 



with anything Hke fideUty or accuracy, without the use 
of language such as has no real meaning unless it implies 
the existence and operation throughout universal nature of a 
supreme actuative and providential Mind and Will ? 

The least and lowest implication which is involved in 
Pantheism, the most elementary idea which the word pan- 
theism can be held to connote, the barest minimum of mean- 
ing which the creed of the pantheist can be presumed to 
contain, is that there is in the whole of nature — in this 
universe of being — a divine unity. Let us then look at 
this word unity, and consider closely what it must mean. 

Those who believe in a divine unity pervading all nature 
must imply that in the midst of the infinite complexity and 
variety of the universe there is everywhere to be recognised 
a grand law and order of nature — a method, plan, and har- 
mony in the great whole, which must consequently be 
traceable through all the parts. But whose and whence is 
this grand law? Is it indeed a reality? Are all things fitted to 
each other, part to part, law to law, force to force, through- 
out the infinite depths of microscopic disclosures, through- 
out the infinite exuberance of nature's grandest provinces, 
throughout all space and all duration? Do all things work 
to meet each other ? Is every several life-cell, each organic 
fibre, moving, tending, developing, making escapes or over- 
tures, as if a separate angel of unerring sympathy and 

/2 



PANTHEISM. 



insight, of illimitable plastic skill and power, of creative 
energy and perfect providence, inhabited, inspired, and 
actuated it? Is it so that the man of science, who enters 
into communion with nature's actual life, and movement, 
and purpose, seems to see and feel divinities, unrestingly, 
unweariedly, in silent omnipotence, in infinite diffusion, 
everywhere at work, so that the reverent inquirer and gazer 
to whom this wondrous spectacle is unveiled, could almost, 
in his own pantheistic sense, adopt the invocation of 
Coleridge, and address the powers he sees at work in such 
words as these : 

*' Spirits that hover o'er 
The immeasurable fount, 
Ebullient with creative Deity ! 
And ye of plastic power that interfused 
Roll throtigk the grosser and 7iiaterial mass, 
In organizing stirge ! Holies of God ! 
[And what if Monads of the Infinite Mind ?y* 

Is it so ? I ask. Then, what does such a real harmony and 
such universal correspondence and providence as this imply? 
Surely we must perforce adopt one of two alternatives. 
If we refuse to believe in One Ruling, Organizing, Creative 
Mind, One Living, Universal Mind and Will and Providence, 
which works through all, we must endow each separate be- 
ing, or at least each form of life, with creative energy, illimit- 
able and all-answering sensibility and sympathy, unerring 

43 



PANTHEISM. 

Wisdom, and veritable will. Nay, ultimately, as it seems to 
me, the alternative must be between accepting the faith in 
an infinite God, and attributing to even the particles of inor- 
ganic matter, amenable as these are to the laws of gravi- 
tation and chemical combination, a wisdom, will, and power 
of their own, the power of intelligence and of self direction. 
As to what are called the laws of gravitation and of chemi- 
cal combination, we know that a law, like "an idol," is 
"nothing in the world" but a name. "There is no power 
but of God ; the powers that be, are ordained of God." 
A law is not a power ; the laws of science do but define 
observed methods of movement or forms of customary 
relation between thing and thing. 

Of one thing, at any rate, I think we may be sure, that a 
mere order of nature, ascertained though it may have been 
by the truest and surest induction, cannot have made and 
cannot sustain itself, cannot be self-originated and self- 
impelled. So also it is certain that a mere plastic universal 
powxr, apart from any creative or providential mind, how- 
ever its products might seem to imply intelligence, could 
be animated by no conscious purpose, and could not 
be conceived as working with blind automatic certainty 
conformably to a grand cosmical plan or towards a provi- 
dential end. And if the divinity of the pantheist is nothing 
more than a personified law or order of nature, his personi- 

44 



PANTHEISM. 

fication of this order or law can add nothing to its virtue or 
potency, can by no means transform it from a phrase into a 
Hving power, from a figure of speech into a real and intelli- 
gent force, can never constitute it into a divinit)'-. The 
more I reflect upon the subject, the more assured the con- 
clusion appears to be, that any conception of a real unity 
in and of nature is self-contradictory and unmeaning, except 
upon the assumption of a conscious and intelligent Creator. 
The unity of nature, to a man who denies the existence of 
a real Gcd, cannot be a unity inherent in nature, cannot be 
a unity according to which nature itself has been planned, 
and is really working ; it is an imputed unity, the conception 
of the pantheistic philosopher's own mind. Unity, indeed, 
as apprehended by us — and it can only be known through 
our apprehension of it — is essentially a conception, a relative 
idea. If one could conceive nature as existing destitute of 
a mind either to work on a plan, or to recognise a plan in 
working, in such nature there could be no unity. Unity in 
action implies a plan of voluntary working, and therefore 
a regulating mind. Unity of conception and exposition 
implies an intelligent observer. The unity of nature, if it 
be not the plan and work of the very God, can be nothing 
more than a scheme and conception which has been invented 
and imputed by man. 

But perhaps it may be thought that the word unity, 

45 



PANTHEISM. 

as used by pantheists, should be understood rather as 
referring to the ultimate oneness and identity of all force 
throughout the universe, than to harmony of universal plan 
and purpose. Various as are the appearances of nature, 
and the modes in which the laws of nature operate, it may 
yet be set forth by the pantheist as his belief, — a belief, he 
will say, which the modern advance of science tends con- 
tinually to establish as the true theory of the universe, — that 
all force is ultimately one, that the different forces of nature 
are mutually convertible and equivalent, that one energy of 
nature, Protean, universal, of infinite plasticity and power of 
variation or adaptation, pervades and actuates all things. 
It may be called gravitation, or electricity, or light, or heat, 
or nervous energy, or vital force ; but ultimately and essen- 
tially it is one and the same ; it is, to quote well-worn lines 
which will be held here strictly to apply — 



It 



** Changed thro' all, and yet in all the same." 

" Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees ; 
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent. 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent : 

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, 
** * * * * * 1^ 

To it no high, no low, no great, no small, 
It fills, it bounds, connects, and equals all. " 

Now if this be the pantheistic unity which is admitted by 

46 



PANTHEISM. 



men who deny a personal Deity, I will not stay to object 
that such a view is hardly consistent with the essential dis- 
tinction in nature which even Professor Huxley and 
men of his school unwaveringly and powerfully maintain, 
between inorganic matter and living forms. It is more to 
my purpose to remark that it is much simpler and easier to 
believe in a personal God, than in such an impersonal 
divinity as this Protean Force. Every difficulty which be- 
longs to the thought of God's existence belongs to this 
also. This force must be self-originated, must have been 
from everlasting, must be creative, omnipresent, providen- 
tial, equal to all plans, purposes, contrivances, inspirations, 
which have been, or ever will be, in this daedalean and 
infinite universe; must be the source of all intelligence, 
though itself unintelligent; of all sympathy, although 
itself incapable of sympathy ; must have formed the eye, 
though it cannot see, and the ear, though it cannot 
hear; must have blossomed and developed into personal 
intelligences, although personal intelligence is a property 
which cannot be attributed to it ; must unquestionably be 
omniscient as well as omnipresent, or it could not, in its in- 
finite convertibility, anticipate all needs, meet all demands, 
answer in absolute and universal harmony to every faculty, 
capability, and tendency of all things that are and all things 
that become. Now is it reasonable to object to the doctrine 

47 



PANTHEISM. 

of a personal Deity because of its inconceivability and its 
stupendous difficulties, and yet to believe in such a primal, 
essential, immaterial, creative, infinite, blind and unintelligent 
force as this? Surely no contradiction could be greater. 
The conception of God as from everlasting is stupendous. 
But an infinite Protean Force from everlasting, destitute of 
intelligence and will, yet continually operative as the life, 
soul, wisdom, and providence, of all things, is nothing less 
than contradictory and absurd. 

I can come to no conclusion, accordingly, but that Pan- 
theism really only differs from atheism, in so far as it confesses 
that it is impossible to speak with ordinary propriety, or in 
any such way as to meet the necessities either of science itself 
or of the common sense and feelings of mankind, without 
employing theistic language. It has been said that hypo- 
crisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue. So a profes- 
sion of Pantheism is the tribute of compliance at least in 
speech, is the outward language of homage, which theism 
has power to extort from atheism. " Pantheism," as is said 
by the author of Lo/hair, "is but atheism in dojiiino. Nothing," 
as the same writer adds, " can surely be more monstrous than 
to represent a creator as unconscious of creating." 

Yes, Pantheism is but veiled atheism. Strip Pantheism 
of all involutions of thought and all investitures of language, 
and in its naked truth it stands forth as mere atheism. 

48 



PANTHEISM. 



Every form which Pantheism takes, every disguise which it 
assumes, to hide from itself and from the world its real cha- 
racter, is a testimony borne by atheism to the necessity 
which all men feel for assuming the existence of Deity ; 
What Robespierre is reported to have said with reference to 
political government and national well-being, that if there 
were not a God, it would be necessary to invent one, is felt 
by pantheistic philosophers to be true in regard to nature. 
So monstrous a conception is that of this universe without 
a governing mind ; so clearly and directly to the common 
sense of mankind do the infinite harmonies of the universe 
seem to imply a designing and governing InteUigence ; so 
indubitably does the might and life of the universe, ever 
coming forth anew, ever springing up afresh, ever unfolding 
and advancing, imply a central living Power, One with the 
infinite governing Intelligence ; that pantheists, in order to 
speak and write intelligibly, are compelled to invest nature 
with the qualities which they deny to the Deity, to attribute 
a spirit and intelligence to the whole machine, because they 
deny the existence of the great Mechanist ; to personify a 
harmony and unity which is but an abstraction, which, on 
their own hypothesis, is but a grand accident, a result with- 
out a cause, because they refuse to believe in a personal 
God. 
I am very far indeed from wishing to come under the 

49 ^ 



PANTHEISM. 



definition of what Mr. Hutton has spoken of as the " Hard 
Church," or to carry my positions merely by the use of the 
dilemma, yet I cannot refrain from saying, parenthetically, 
that the argument of the dilemma, carefully and truly ap- 
plied, is not only always legitimate but often necessar}^, and 
I must affirm that it applies very closely in the present in- 
stance. The pantheist cannot maintain his position mid- 
way between atheism and theism. If he absolutely refuses 
to be a theist, it is necessary to show him that he will have 
to yield to the cruel necessity of acknowledging himself to 
be an atheist. Standing midway, his position is altogether 
untenable, from whichever side it is assailed. On the one 
side, the pantheist is condemned by the same arguments 
which condemn atheism ; on the other side, the atheist may 
justly allege against the position of the pantheist the self- 
same difficulties which both pantheist and atheist urge 
against theism. 

But if pantheism be in reality only atheism, I may hence- 
forth disregard the verbal distinction between the two, and 
bring forward considerations and arguments which apply 
indifferently to either. In pursuing the discussion I shall 
take up in detail some points of argument already, as to 
their general scope, more or less distinctly intimated in the 
preliminary considerations which I have advanced. 

To explode any view of the world which excludes from it 

50 



PANTHEISM. 



the presence and government of a personal God, nothing 
more is needed than to realize and truly understand the 
atheistic view in its various aspects. Let us try the atheist's 
theor)'^ on the history of the universe, and see whether it can 
be made to fit, or must be broken in the attempt to fit it. 

The will and interference of God, as the Lord and Ruler 
of the universe, is excluded. The universe is held to have 
been from the beginning without a shaping and ruling intel- 
ligence and will. No mind has presided over its destinies, 
has aminated its energies ; no providence of Divine power 
and wisdom Ims guided its changes and progress, has re- 
newed and replenished and sustained it. It follows that no 
power or will from beyond itself has ever touched the uni- 
verse. Its own unaided and unguided powers have done all. 
If the universe did not make itself, it has developed itself : all 
that has been, or is to be, was included potentially in that 
which was at the beginning, and has unfolded in necessary 
order.- The vision presented is to certain minds very fasci- 
nating : it is a vision of vast unbroken progress, of continual 
and infinite self-development. But let it be worked out, and 
let us consider what it really means. Such an hypothesis 
must lead us back, in the infinite dim distance of the original 
and indistinguishable past, into a universe-mist of germinal 
powers from which all has since developed. — But stay. Was 
this mist and expanse of universal nature in its origines all 

5-1 



PANTHEISM. ' ' 

homogeneous and at one stage of existence ? Then I have 
to ask, whence came it ? What, going ever further and fur- 
ther back, where were the infinitely earHer, fainter, evanish- 
ing entities or powers, into which infinite creative force and 
potentiaHty was diffused? and what the one Hfe and grand har- 
mony of influences and impulses, tending towards an infinite 
goal of progress and perfection, which pervaded the whole ? 
What does all this mean ? Is this easier, simpler, more ra- 
tional, than to believe in God from everlasting ? Is anything 
gained in simplicity, comprehensibility, probability, or in 
scientific character, by denying that in the " increasing pur- 
pose " which *' runs through the ages" there is any guidance 
of a divine intelligence or working of a divine will ; and call- 
ing the whole process from first to last, from everlasting to 
everlasting, "development"? What is this word development 
but a name ? Does the use of the word explain anything ? 
Does the use of the word reduce the mystery of the universe 
to the simplicity of an axiom ? Does the use of the word 
provide a simple equivalent for all that divine wisdom, power, 
and providence, have ever been imagined to do for the uni- 
verse ? Men call the mystery of being and becoming by 
the name of development, and then say that all things are 
effected by development, and that development explains all ! 
Whereas this development of which they talk so familiarly, 
as though they understood all its secrets, and were privy to 

52 



PANTHEISM. 



its infinitely various and mighty workings, and could unfold 
its source and meaning, is itself all the time the very mystery 
to be resolved and explained. Development is in truth as 
amazing and incomprehensible a mystery as creation. It 
seems to be but another word for creation. Only they who 
affect its use instead of the word creation., insist upon crea- 
tion without a creator. The unintelligent and unconscious 
universe, on their view, is continually creating itself. 

The hypothesis of development, however, is not only un- 
intelligible and utterly devoid of reality, when criticized in 
its general principle; as might be expected, it altogether 
breaks down when it is tested in detail. Professor Huxley's 
protoplasm breaks it down. All the scientific evidence, as 
that eminent teacher of science showed at Liverpool last 
autumn, is opposed to the idea that protoplasm was deve- 
loped out of inorganic matter. The hypothesis of sponta- 
neous life-generation appears to be exploded. Science, at 
any rate, on its own positive principles, has no right what- 
ever to pretend that life has ever been developed out of 
what was not living. Here, then, a great and, so far as 
science can help us to form a judgment, an altogether 
impassable barrier rises to view against any development 
hypothesis. At a certain stage in the history of the universe 
protoplasm, organized life, made its appearance on the scene, 
starting up as a perfectly new, an original, an undeveloped 

53 



PANTHEISM. 



phenomenon. Before, all had been inorganic and dead; 
now Life was abroad in the world, destined to increase and 
multiply, and replenish the universe. Let those who deny 
divine and creative will and government, inform us whence 
came this life. It was not developed. Must it not have 
been created. If not, then whence, I ask, whence did it 
spring ? 

The argument which I have just urged should, as I ven- 
ture to think, be conclusive even with those who know, and 
seek to know, nothing more of science than the order and 
method of its phenomenal processes. I will now bring 
forward a consideration which will, I hope, be admitted to 
have weight by those men of science — it is to be greatly 
lamented that there should be so few of these — who have 
studied the nature and working of the mind as well as the 
phenomena of sense. We have seen that protoplasm — that 
Life — was not developed out of inorganic matter, but ap- 
pears to have been an entirely new and primary fact on the 
face of the universe. Life came in and appropriated, put 
to its own uses, bound up under its own seal, impreg- 
nated with its own specific virtue, the raw inorganic 
materials which it found in nature ; but the power of Life 
itself was altogether new. A fact in somxC sort analogous to 
this confronts us in a higher sphere, in the sphere of living 
intelligence itself. I refer to the emergence of personal 

54 



PANTHEISM. 



consciousness among the world of living creatures. To me 
it appears that the sense of personality is an altogether new 
and original fact, one which cannot be conceived as de- 
veloped or developable out of any pre-existing phenomena 
or conditions. Whence it comes, or how it arises, I know 
not. But it appears to be, in and of itself, the assertion of 
an essential separateness between One's Self and all pheno- 
mena, all constituents, all conditions whatever. The sense 
of an I IMyself, of Personality, asserts an antithesis between 
the Man, and all that the Man uses, takes up into his person- 
ality, makes his own. As Life binds up inorganic matter 
under its seal, but is not developed out of inorganic matter, 
so the voluntary and responsible Self binds up under the 
seal of its own personality all that belongs to the manifold 
life of its complex being. As life brings into the universe a 
new world of phenomena, higher and more manifold than 
those of mere inorganic matter, yet embodying and adopt- 
ing these, so personality brings into the universe a new 
world of vastly higher and rarer phenomena than those of 
mere vitality, yet embodies and adopts these : — it intro- 
duces all that belongs to reflection and morality, giving 
birth to an intelligence and a world of thought, in which 
all the lower and anterior phenomena of the world become 
matters of cognisance, and are mirrored as objects of thought. 
As I venture to think that this sense of personality, with 

55 



PANTHEISM. 

the new world of reflective consciousness and morality 
which it brings in, is a fact, starting up in the midst of a 
universe of anterior developments, such as all Mr. Darwin's 
solvents utterly fail to touch, a phenomenon which remains 
as far from explanation as before he wrote his last book, so 
it appears to me that the power of human speech is another 
fact starting up in the midst of the line of supposed develop- 
ments which no hypothesis of evolution can afford any 
help towards explaining. Miraculously developed reason, 
something higher, as it seems to me, than any development 
of human reason our race has, in its highest culture, as yet 
put forth, must have been necessary in order to the inven- 
tion of language by any race even of the most sagacious 
mammals. And yet, again, speech itself is a necessity, a 
necessary instrument, in order to the high development of rea- 
son. We have some idea what deaf mutes of our human 
family are like, when no painstaking and kindly culture has 
been bestowed on their intelligence, and temper, and affec- 
tions, and conscience. Let us conceive the whole race of 
man to be, and to have been from the beginning, not in- 
deed deaf, but congenitally and irreversibly dumb, with no 
more power of articulate expression than a horse, or let us 
say, a dog. What would the development of human reason 
have been under such conditions ? How, then, is it possible 
to conceive that the wondrous faculty and instrument of 



PANTHEISM. 

speech was ever invented and perfected by mammals of 
infra-human faculty and development, and that they were 
afterwards through this invention developed yet more 
highly, until they attained to the dignity and advancement 
of humanity ? Such infra-human mammals must have been 
more miraculously endowed in order to such an invention 
than ever man himself has been. 

After all that Mr. Darwin has written, does or can any 
reasonable man or woman actually believe in the possibility, — 
apart from the Divine Power and Will and Guidance, — ^for 
that is the point, — of the self-development, the spontaneous 
upgrowth of articulate language ? Let us study our quadru- 
pedal familiars, for the sake of illustration and analogy. 
We see daily how our noble dogs strain and groan after 
speech, do all but speak : we mark their eloquent looks, 
their speaking gestures, their wonderfully expressive move- 
ments, how they watch us speak, and seem as if they 
understood what speech is to us, and as if they craved 
most longingly the power for themselves. We cannot but 
sympathetically admire the intelligent, the benevolent, the 
noble, the sagacious physiognomies which they show. If 
any creature ever could, would, or did develop speech in 
any rudimentary form, are not they just in the circumstances 
to do it? And when once rudimentally begun, however 
uncouthly and imperfectly, should not their organs continu- 

57 



PANTHEISM. 

ally improve by the continual effort and the increasing 
intelligence ? Is it not immensely less hard of belief, and 
less difficult to imagine, that dogs should develop speech, 
than that man should have been developed from the larvse 
of the ascidice ? Yet is there even a beginning made to- 
vrards the canine development of articulate language, or 
does any living man believe that such a beginning ever 
could be made ? 

To me it appears that human speech and human per- 
sonality are in some way bound up with each other, that 
the one, in some sort, implies the other, and that these two 
characteristics of our race present an insuperable obstacle 
to the acceptance by really scientific thinkers of any 
hypothesis Oi evolution which, leaving God out of nature, 
would account for the whole existence and progress of the 
universe on the principle of spontaneous development. 

But again, let me be allowed to test the development 
hypothesis in detail at another point. This hypothesis — 
and any pantheistic or atheistic view of the universe which 
professes to be scientific — is obliged to confess that all 
living beings, of whatever sort, have been developed out of 
a single primary cell — called often a germ-cell — of proto- 
plasm. Here they find the beginning of every kind of life. 
The plant, the animal, of every sort, — the lichen, the cedar, 
the sponge, the bird, the mammal, the minutest entozoon, 

58 



PANTHEISM, 



the most microscopic infusorium, and man, — have been 
developed out of these primary cells. What then do the 
same men who teach us this, find to be the constitution of 
these same cells, when microscopically examined ? They 
find them to be, for the most part, and indeed always, if 
allowance be made for very trivial exceptions, identically 
the same. The matter is identically the same, the appear- 
ance identically the same j no difference v/hatever of con- 
stitution, form, or properties, is to be detected. They can- 
not tell whether the nettle, or the frog, or the eagle, or the 
man, is to be developed out of any given cell : for anything 
their science can teach them, any of these might be de- 
veloped, as they call it, out of any cell. But if this be so, 
is it scientific, is it real or true, is it not altogether mislead- 
ing, to speak of mere development in such a case ? The 
flower may be said to be developed out of the bud because 
the bud is the flower in miniature, the flower is really folded 
up in the bud. But surely here is no case of mere develop- 
ment ; here is no unfolding out of the germ-cell of what is 
potentially contained in the cell, regarded as a merely material 
organism. Judged by every test of physical experiment, the 
primary cells are identically the same ; and yet they grow 
into forms essentially and infinitely dissimilar. Does it not 
clearly appear that here is a matter in which some power 
above and beyond the mere physical constitution and nature 

59 



PANTHEISM. 

of the primary cell must be admitted, on every principle of 
science, on every ground of pure candour and truth, to be 
of necessity present ? Is it not evident that with each germ- 
cell there must be associated some individual life-power 
which animates the cell, which uses it as a unit to multiply, 
as a foundation to build upon, which does build and weave 
and work into it and upon it continually new material, 
which, for its own use in its w^ork of weaving and fabricating, 
and for the completion of its own distinctive form and 
vehicle, takes toll of air and earth and water and heat- 
power — the ancient elements — selecting out of them its ap- 
propriate pabulum, in whatever chemical combinations of the 
primary elements known to our modern scientific analysis 
may be fit and needfiil ? Surely not development, but life, 
the mystery of individual life, is here. And if the philoso- 
pher will deny the omnipresent creative and sustaining 
power of God, it appears to me that he must be prepared 
to animate each germ-cell with an individual intelligence 
which works with divine power, on a definite and most 
miraculous plan, and tovv^ards a distinct goal of perfection. 
To call such various powers and processes, such diverse 
and generically different operations, in every sphere of life, 
by the same term, appears to me to be unscientific ; to speak 
of them all alike as processes of unfolding or development, 
when results the most infinitely unlike and separate are ob- 

60 



PANTHEISM. 



tained from beginnings which are identically alike, appears 
to be not only unscientific But altogether misleading. 

I do not think it arrogant or unwarranted to conclude 
from such considerations as I have been trying to set forth, 
that evolution, or development, apart from the power and 
guidance of the Living God, is an un philosophical, an un- 
scientific idea, an empty, an unmeaning word. It is a thing 
of naught, utterly impotent to solve the mysteries of the uni- 
verse, even when expounded and reinforced by Mr. Darwin's 
" Natural Selection." I have not a word to say here against 
the views of Mr. Darwin, as defined and modified by the 
requirements of scientific modesty and precision. If I had 
any pretensions to be called a student of natural science, I 
should sit at the feet of Mr. Darwin when he speaks, not 
as a philosophic theorist, but as a scientific observer and a 
truly inductive naturalist. But I must say here in respect 
to Natural Selection, regarded as, according to Mr. Dar- 
win's hypothesis, the handmaid of development, that, hke 
development, it is but a name, and not a power. It de- 
scribes the order and mode according to which Providence 
works ; it is not itself a force — a working energy. Mr. 
Darwin himself indeed often speaks as if Natural Selection 
were itself a power and a providence. I find to my hand 
in Mr. Kingsley's fine, suggestive paper on The Natural 
Theology of the Future^ recently published in Macmilla7i^s 

6i 



PANTHEISM. 



Magazme, a sentence of Mr. Darwin's in regard to Natural 
Selection which I will quote. " It may be metaphorically- 
said, " writes Mr. Darwin, " that natural selection is daily 
and hourly scrutinizing throughout the world every variation 
even the slightest ; rejecting that which is bad, preserving 
and adding up that which is good, silently and necessarily 
working whenever and wherever opportunity offers at the 
improvement of every organic being." *' It may be meta- 
phorically said," are Mr. Darwin's words. But in fact he is 
using, not a metaphor, but a personification. The distinction 
Mr. Darwin does not see. He repeatedly speaks of his 
personifications as metaphors. But the distinction notwith- 
standing is most important. By personifying Natural Selec- 
tion Mr. Darwin makes it appear to be a cause, attributes 
to it a real power, nay, wisdom and providence, as well as 
power. He speaks in one place of " Nature's power of selec- 
tion;" contrasting this with the "powers of artificial selec- 
tion exercised by feeble man," by which, however, man can 
do so much ; and arguing that " Nature's power of selec- 
tion " must be incomparably greater, and competent to 
produce incomparably superior effects in respect of "the 
beauty and infinite complexity of the co-adaptations be- 
tween all organic beings, one with another, and with their 
physical conditions of life." Language of a similar sort he 
very frequently uses. He has, therefore, as a scientific man 

62 



PANTHEISM. 

laid himself open to the reproof of M. Flourens, whom no 
one will deny to be a scientific critic. " Either," says M. 
Flourens, " Natural Selection is nothing, or it is nature, but 
nature endowed with the attribute of selection — nature per- 
sonified, which is the last error of the last century; the 
nineteenth century has done with personifications." The 
nineteenth century ought to have done with personifications ; 
but with the spirit of Lamarck's speculations the style of 
the French atheistic philosophy of the last century reappears. 

Mr. Darwin, in the passage quoted by Mr. Kingsley, 
describes the manner in which his Natural Selection may be 
conceived as operating. What, if his meaning were expressed 
with strict scientific truth, he ought to intend to say, is that 
such as he describes is the result of providential working 
according to the mode and order which he designates by the 
phrase Natural Selection. " All we ask," says one of Mr. 
Darwin's ablest critics, "is that we may be allowed to believe 
in a God and a real Divine Providence, as powerful and 
wise and good as Mr. Darwin's Natural Selection." 

But, moreover, it must not be forgotten that there is some- 
thing besides the mere process of change and growth, of 
what our philosophers call development, to be accounted 
for. There is a fact on which the growth, the change, the 
evolution, must be held in a true sense to depend : a prior 
fact to be taken account of. The growth proceeds upon a 



PANTHEISM. 

plan, and fulfils an idea : protoplasm itself embodies a 
scientific principle. But as the seal must be before the im- 
pression, the original before the copy, so the principle must be 
before its embodiment, the plan and the idea must be before 
the growth : the end, towards which as its goal the growth 
or development proceeds, must have been conceived and 
set up as an aim before its fulfilment began. We are bound 
therefore, if we would exhaust the problem, nay, if we would 
truly conceive, and justly state it, to ask how and whence the 
principle, the plan, the idea, the end, had their existence ? 
These are realities; they are the most inner and essential reali- 
ties in every instance of growth or development ; to deal only 
with the development of the physical basis, is to leave un- 
touched the kernel of the matter, is altogether superficial and 
unreal. But principles, plans, types and ideas, ends contem- 
plated in movement and progress, these at any rate are 
not physical, are not matters of sense and organization. 
They are, as I have said, prior to what is physical, 
they are conditions antecedent to organization and growth. 
Moreover, they are mental conceptions, not physical afi'ec- 
tions. They are only possible, they have no meaning, 
except as the thoughts of some mind. Here, then, we are 
brought back by an inevitable necessity to an antecedent 
mind, the seat and origin of all the principles, the plans 
the ideas, the ends, embodied in organized beings, and ful- 

64 



PANTHEISM. 

filled in their existence, growth, and perfection. In short, 
from whatever side we contemplate the problems of nature, 
and whencesoever we take our point of departure in their 
investigation, we find ourselves brought face to face with 
creative mind. The things which are " seen and temporal" 
lead us always inwards to "the things which are unseen 
and eternal ; " man and creaturely existence conduct us to 
the living God. 

If any one would escape from the pressure of this argu- 
ment by hardily denying that living organization involves 
principle or plan, type or idea, purpose or end, it can only 
follow that the living forms of the universe are an infinite 
congeries of accidental combinations, that in reality there 
are no such things as organs, that there can be no such 
thing as development, and that there is no such thing as 
law. What men call law is mere sequence that happens to 
follow regularly. The whole universe has been constituted 
and regulated by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. Against 
such a conclusion as this I do not need to argue. It is the 
naked and repulsive atheism of which I spoke in the intro- 
duction to this lecture. The line of argument which I have 
been pursuing seems to force us to the conclusion that there 
is no logical resting-place between such theism as Christianity 
teaches and such Democritean atheism as that of which we~ 

have now had a glimpse. 

5 



PANTHEISM. 



But if this be so, it follows that it is impossible to deny 
design and final causes in creation, and the sway and over- 
sight of a universal Divine Providence, the providence of a 
living God, except by denying all law. To the Christian 
theist, science is living science indeed \ to the pantheist, no 
less than the atheist, science is hardly better than a dead 
register. He may talk of the wisdom, the power, the order, 
the benevolence, of nature. But such expressions on the 
lips of a pantheist are utterly illusive. All the wisdom, all 
the marvellous adjustments of nature, are but the happy 
conjunctures, the exquisite chance unisons, of he knows not 
what. When lost in admiration of marvellous organizations, 
complexly apt and beautiful contrivances, of what seem like 
the most studied and beneficent provisions, the soul that is 
beginning to glow with wonder at this seeming wisdom, and 
to swell with thankfulness because of this seeming love, 
must be chilled into blank confusion and amazement by the 
thought that there is no Being of Wisdom and Benevolence 
Who is to be thanked and adored because of these His 
marvellous works. Surely this is enough to darken the uni- 
verse to the explorer of nature's mysteries, and to fill his 
soul mth perpetual melancholy. Nor is it easy to under- 
stand how any man of true science, any real inductive 
philosopher, who comes into contact with nature's Hving 
processes and hears the perpetual whisper of her living voice, 



PANTHEISM. 



can be ensnared into the acceptance of such a hard mystery 
of sceptical belief as this. 

Surely, then, on purely scientific grounds, — the grounds 
not only of metaphysical but also of natural science, on 
every ground which can be appealed to by high and pure 
philosophy, we are at liberty, I should say we are bound, to 
reject the hypothesis which attempts to expound nature and 
to solve its mysteries, without the admission of a divine 
mind. Sense and matter and the observed order of pheno- 
mena do not constitute the whole of our science. There 
are some words written by a poet, too much neglected at the 
present time, which I cannot forbear from quoting here. 

** How should matter occupy a charge 
Dull as it is, and satisfy a law, 
So vast in its demands, unless impelled 
To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force, 
And under pressure of some conscious cause ? 
The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused, 
Sustains, and is the life of all that lives. 
Nature is but a name for an effect, 
Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fire 
By which the mighty process is maintained, 
Who sleeps not, is not weary ; in whose sight 
Slow circling ages are as transient days ; 
Whose work is without labour ; whose designs 
No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts ; 
And whose beneficence no charge exhausts." 

Surely, if I may here quote some words of Mr. Kingsley's 

67 



PANTHEISM. 



in the lecture to which I have aheady referred, this is 
what men of science " are finding, more and more, below 
their facts, below all phenomena which the scalpel and the 
microscope can show, a something nameless, invisible, im- 
ponderable, yet seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent, 
retreating before them deeper and deeper, the deeper .they 
delve, that which the old schoolmen called ' forma forma- 
tiva,' the mystery of that unknown and truly miraculous 
element in nature which is always escaping them, though 
they cannot escape it, that of which it was written of 
old, ' Whither shall I go from Thy presence, or whither 
shall I flee from Thy Spirit ? ' " 

The observations which I have thus far offered are 
directed wholly to the philosophical and scientific aspect 
of the argument respecting Pantheism. I cannot bring 
this lecture to an end without referring to the moral 
branch of the argument. The existence of evil in the uni- 
verse is alleged as an argument against the existence of 
God and divine government. Doubtless, the existence of 
evil is a painful mystery. Many good Christians have felt 
it to be an oppressive and almost an overwhelming mystery. 
It is one of the difficulties attendant on the Christian's 
belief; it is, in fact, the one moral difficulty. But difficul- 
ties and mysteries cannot annul the positive necessities of 

thought and argument. If such arguments as I have en- 

68 



PANTHEISM. 

deavoured to state make all science to be contradictory and 
unintelligible which speaks, in one breath, of the laws and 
wisdom of nature, and, in the next, denies the existence of 
a God, then we are bound to accept theism with its inevi- 
table consequences, notwithstanding the mysteries, whether 
metaphysical or moral, which our faith may involve. Mys- 
teries are not contradictions, and, in whichever direction we 
move, we shall find it impossible to escape from them. 
Mysteries surround the position of the sceptic or the 
atheist, no less than that of the Christian theist ; not only 
mysteries, but^ as we have seen, contradictions, beset him 
round, in whichever direction he turns. The Christian 
theist, by his faith in God, accepts the mysteries which are 
involved in the thought of God, but, unlike the unbeliever, 
he escapes from contradictions and absurdities. It appears 
that the morality of man — his great glory — that his sense of 
responsibility and of voluntary moral power, that which 
most peculiarly constitutes him man, involves the law of 
moral influence as between man and man. It appears 
further that the power and faculty of moral influence for 
good must needs involve the law of moral influence for evil. 
From the fact of man's own moral nature and moral re- 
ponsibility, and the consequent fact of his moral influence 
over his fellow-men, is derived, not only the possibility of 
moral evil in the case of a solitary individual^ but the possi- 

69 



PANTHEISM, 



bility, perhaps I may say the naturalness, the probabiHty, of 
a contagion of moral evil spreading throughout the race, 
the effect of which can only be counteracted or limited by 
moral arrangements and influences specially constituted for 
that end. So much I may perhaps say in general, although 
the subject is one on which I think it wiser, as a rule, to say 
nothing. I feel it to be a profound and perilous mystery, 
however gloriously it may have been made the occasion for 
the manifestation in Christ Jesus our Lord of the Divine 
superabounding wisdom, mercy, and power. But if we 
admit the subject to be involved in profound, even terrible 
mystery, is that a reason why, making shipwreck at one 
plunge of all that belongs to humanity, faith and hope and 
philosophy should commit suicide, and descend together 
into the gulf of everlasting darkness and despair ! Reason 
may reel and grow dizzy while it looks too long and too 
absorbedly down the fearful and fathomless depths of the 
mystery of sin, but that is no sufficient cause why reason 
should cast itself headlong into the abyss. 

Pantheism has only one way in which to escape from the 
mystery of evil, and that is to deny all distinction between 
right and wrong, between moral good and moral evil. Of 
course there can be no such thing as sin for the pantheist, 
because all, according to his creed, is nature and develop- 
ment and necessity. Holiness is a matter of taste or senti- 

7o 



PANTHEISM. 

ment. Conscience is an illusive development; what we 
regard as divine morality is but utilitarianism sentimentalized 
and exalted into sacred law under the influence of unen- 
lightened impulse and antique superstition, a mere affair of 
the association of ideas which science will some day explain 
away. The ontology and ethics of Pantheism may be sum- 
med up in one sentence, " Whatever is, is ; and there is 
neither rigtit nor wrong, but all is fate and nature." Pan- 
theism — I say Pantheism just as truly and completely as 
atheism, for the difference between the two, as we have seen, 
is but one of name and phrase, and both alike deny God and 
conscience — Pantheism thus does cruel violence to every 
better instinct of our nature, outrages all the demands of 
religion and government, whether human or divine, and 
makes itself the direst foe of human progress and wellbeing. 
Many pantheists, doubtless, have been and are virtuous, 
even noble, men ; some, I am prepared to believe, may even, 
in a certain sense, be religious men. But the direct tendency 
of the pantheistic philosophy is confessedly what I have 
now stated. When moral and pure, its pure morality can be 
nothing more, at least in theory, than a refined utilitarianism. 
Only as such can any pantheist pretend to impose morality 
as law. 

To sum up, may I not say that Pantheism, whether in its 
metaphysical or its moral aspect, is the dream of men who 

11 



PANTHEISM. 



will not admit that there is in the universe anything beyond 
what their senses immediately reveal to them ? Its philoso- 
phy was represented in the last century in its lower and 
more popular form by Condorcet; the basis of whose 
system was laid in the principle, " penser c'est sentir," — 
thought is nothing more than sense or feeling ; in its higher 
and more intellectual form it was represented by the 
sceptical sense-idealism of Hume. At the present day Bain 
and Mill have endeavoured to develop the principle of 
Condorcet in harmony with the higher and more subtle 
philosophy of Hume. The result appears to be a sort of 
nihilistic sense-idealism. Matter is probably nothing dif- 
ferent from our mental ideas — so far Berkeley, no less than 
Hume, is followed ; our ideas, however developed, are yet 
essentially only the combination and interfusion of our 
sensations and sense-associations; meantime there is no evi- 
dence of the real and substantial existence either of the world 
outside us, or of ourselves as true and separate selves or 
persons, or of God. Such at least would seem to be the 
metaphysics of the distinctively English school of Pantheism, 
/.<?., of Pantheism rendered into philosophic system by the 
English mind. The German Pantheism has infected the ten- 
dencies of English thought and criticism, but, notwithstanding 
the influence of Hegel at Oxford, has not been reproduced 
in any English, system of egoistic Pantheism, In their aspects 

72 



PANTHEISM. 



and results, in relation to theism and Christian faith, the 
German egoistic Pantheism and the English sense-idealistic 
Pantheism strictly coincide. 

Such then is the highest philosophy to-day of those 
who, refusing to be called atheists, nevertheless reject all 
faith in God j of those who, rejecting Christian theism, claim 
to be positively neither more nor less than the men of 
science. Men of science though they be, their philoso- 
phy is the philosophy of nescience and the philosophy of 
despair. We need be under no apprehension that such a 
philosophy will ever be generally accepted. It is too strong, 
too sorrowful, too nauseous a composition to suit the com- 
mon taste. It not only dissolves morality and its foundations, 
but it precludes all hope of immortality. The race indeed 
may be immortal and progressively great and glorious, al- 
though how even so much can be known is more than I can 
see j but the individual man by man, woman by woman, 
child by child, perishes each one for ever. Men and women 
with yearning, loving hearts, with tender and passionate 
affections, who have buried their dead out of their sight, 
and who could not endure to live if they were doomed to 
sorrow without hope, cannot but reject with loathing and 
horror such doctrines as these. Men of various culture, 
of manifold intellectual resources, who live in the midst of 
refined and accomplished society, and who are not suffering 

73 



PANTHEISM, 



from the pang of immedicable anguish and irreparable 
bereavement, may possibly live so merely intellectual and 
speculative a life, may be so wholly absorbed in mere 
science, may have so far separated themselves from all that 
belongs to the heart's affections and the trembling religious 
sensibilities of human nature, as to adopt the philosophy of 
nihilism with hardy calmness, although I confess that it 
passes my power to understand or conceive this ; such men 
may be content to follow their speculative conclusions into 
the " blackness of darkness " for ever, and may thus, if not 
less, be more than the common crowd of humanity. But 
such a philosophy \sdll not content those who share the 
ordinary wants and sensibilities of our race. The working, 
sorroAving, loving, hoping men and women of this human 
race will no more be able to satisfy themselves with any 
atheistic or, if any should prefer so to call it, pantheistic 
philosophy, than they can " feast upon the east wind." 
They \^dll cleave to that Christian truth and faith which has 
" brought life and immortality to light," and which, in "show- 
ing" to the craving heart of needy, sorrowing, sinful man 
"the Father " reconciled in Christ, has blessedly " sufficed" 
a longing world. 

Indeed, it would seem that, when It comes to the point, 
even distinguished leaders in the ranks of those against 
whose views I have been arguing, find it impossible to give 

74 



PANTHEISM. 



up their faith, at least in immortahty. Renan is unquestion- 
ably one of the most distinguished leaders among those men 
of learning and culture who deny the existence of a creative 
will and Personal God. Yet Renan cannot make up his 
mind that he has lost for ever his beloved sister ; that she 
has passed into the night of nothingness into which he must 
soon follow her. In the dedication to her memory of his 
"Life of Jesus," he addresses an invocation to "the pure 
soul of his sister Henriette, who died at Byblos, Sept. 24th, 
i86ij" and appeals to her "to reveal to him, from the 
bosom of God in which she rests, those truths which are 
mightier than death, and take away the fear of death." 

Renan, then, after all, cannot give up his sister, nor, if it 
were only for her sake, his belief in immortality. And yet 
how utterly unscientific is such a belief, if science is to be 
defined and limited in accordance with the principles of the 
anti-theistic philosophy. Where can our men of mere sense- 
science find any physical basis of immortality ? There is no 
hope, no instinct or faith, at once so indissolubly bound up 
with our nature, so necessary to the development of all that 
is best in man, and so utterly destitute of evidence and basis 
in merely natural science, as our assurance of immortality. 
If we are to retain our belief in immortality, we must main- 
tain our faith in realities above and apart from sense, in 
realities which cannot be tested or investigated by any 

75 



PANTHEISM. 



appliances of natural science. If immortality be true, Pan- 
theism cannot be true. 

What, then, have we found respecting the seductive and 
too fashionable illusion which has led astray so many minds, 
especially of speculative, restless, and daring intelligence, in 
the present age ? We have found that Pantheism is essen- 
tially only atheism in disguise, and occupies a position in 
which it combines against itself the arguments which theists 
have to allege against atheism, and atheists against theism; 
that, while it dethrones the true God, it sets up in His place 
Development and Natural Selection as its divinities, cloth- 
ing them with the attributes which it denies to deity ; that 
its development hypothesis will not bear the test of science, 
of the natural science to which it professes to appeal ; that 
the origin of protoplasm, the attributes of man, and the 
growth and transformation of germ-cells, alike refuse to 
accord with the hypothesis ; that the very nature of science 
itself, as recognizing law and organization, is incompatible 
with any philosophy which denies theism ; that the moral 
difficulties which rise up as a barrier against a denial of the 
Christian theism are no less insurmountable than the meta- 
physical and scientific difficulties \ that morality, conscience, 
natural affection, immortal hope, every deepest, most tender 
and sacred, most blessed and humanising, instinct of our 
nature is violated by the denial of a personal and holy Gcd 

76 



PANTHEISM. 

and Judge; in a word, that our whole humanity revolts 
against it. 

May I venture to hope that the views which I have now 
endeavoured to set forth may have some weight with young 
and inquiring spirits ? No more terrible suffering can there 
be, than for an honest, loving, and virtuous nature to be- 
come involved in the meshes of pantheistic doubt and 
unbelief. We must make up our minds to bear with many 
profound and painful mysteries which are not to be solved 
by man ; but may the good Spirit of God save us each 
and all from losing our childlike faith in His almighty, 
omnipresent, and absolutely good and holy government and 
providence 1 



77 



POSITIVISM. 

BY THE 

REV. W. JACKSON, M.A., F.S.A., 

LATE FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD. 



POSITIVISM. 



Everybody in this room has, I suppose, heard of the " posi- 
tive" sciences, or *' Positivism '' in some shape or other. 

What does " Positivism " mean? 

A system based on positive facts. But what are facts ? 
They are (says the Positivist) observed phenomena. As 
for metaphysical conceptions of all sorts, these are negatives 
with nothing real, nothing positively true in them. Truth 
must be sought amongst observed phenomena. 

It is worth our while to examine this last proposition. 
Take a '■'- pheno^nefion,^^ You have all observed colour, — 
what is it ? 

A physicist, if you ask him, will tell you of a modification 
in a ray of light variously produced — by refraction, for ex- 
ample — as when sunlight breaks a dark cloud into many- 
tinted beauty. But how if all the world of men and animals 
were blind ? 

The physiologist will step in and speak to you of the 

8i 6 



POSITIVISM. 



Structure of the eye — the susceptibihty of its retma for special 
impressions ; there he says you may find colour. 

Put both accounts together, and they appear as part- 
causes, each a factor helping to make up a result ; which 
result physicist and physiologist would agree to call colour. 

Yet again : Suppose the human and animal world were 
deprived of all consciousness, all which in the widest mean- 
ing we call mind — their eyes remaining like mirrors, tele- 
scopes, microscopes ; perfect instruments, only every kind 
of intelligence, instinctive or rational, gone. Where would 
colour then be ? The sun might play upon cloud or rain, 
the light of a rainbow be reflected in the eye. Were there 
but perceiving mind, the impression would exist. But we 
are supposing the impressible to be wanting ; there is no 
sensation, no percipient ; colour must remain unknown, for 
there is nothing capable of observing it. 

Now this shows you, first, how important it is to emphasize 
the word observed added to phenomenon. It shows you, 
secondly, 7£//^^r^ the ultimate seat of every observation really 
lies; each observed phenomenon, each positive fact, is at 
last neither more nor less than a mental state. The evi- 
dence for each fact is the condition of your own mind, your 
consciousness as it is called. You may sift the thing wit- 
nessed, verify, examine, and cross-examine ; but after all, your 
own consciousness is the first real evidence you have got. 

82 



POSITIVISM. 

It would seem, then, that the most positive of all sciences 
would be the science of mind ; and the next most positive 
the sciences which enable us to draw conclusions from our 
positively existing mental states; the statements, we may 
call them, which our minds make to us. Yet, strange to 
say, the very first thing Positivism does is to dispense with 
a science of mind, as mind, altogether. Mr. Mill makes it 
a severe reproach against Comte, that he ignores both 
psychology and logic; recognizes no power in the mind, 
even of self-observation ; accepts no theory even of the in- 
ductive process. Mr. Mill characterises Comte's want of 
mental science as " a grave aberration."* It is indeed so. 
This appears plainly enough in the example just adduced 
from our commonest sensation, the every-day phenomenon 
of colour. It was made up, you saw, of three factors, a phy- 
sical antecedent, a condition of the sensitive apparatus, and 
a mind which received into its consciousness the impression 
instrumentally conveyed to it. This last, you will remem- 
ber, was \hQ first fact to us. It is the fact : the revelation of 
an outward world, its changes and its continuing presence, 
its rest and its constant motion. Without this fact of in- 
ward consciousness, nature would have possessed no more 
significance than pictures seen in the eyes of the newly dead. 

Such being the case, it needs no argument to show the 
* See Mill on Comte, p. 62, seq. 
83 



POSITIVISM. 

Importance of making quite sure that our interpretation of 
nature is correct. If there be any unobserved illusion in 
our sensory instruments, or what must evidently be much 
worse, in our percipient mind, truth is at an end, and false- 
hood received in its stead. Hence the necessity of observ- 
ing our own observations, subjecting our consciousness to 
scrutiny, and being acquainted with the criteria, not only of 
our perceptions, but of our judgments. It is this process of 
analysis and criticism which forms a large part of the 
method of verification, — a method the value of which did 
not escape the great Greek philosophers, though some 
recent writers seem to fancy it a modern discovery. 

Inexperienced observers are often so little aware of the 
pre-eminent importance of this critical process, that I will 
detain you with an illustration of it for the benefit of my 
younger auditors. My example shall be taken from per- 
ception par excellence — our eyesight, the sense pronounced 
surest both in poetry and prose. You will remember your 
Horace 

Segnius imtant animos demissa per aurem, 
Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quae 
Ipse sibi tradit spectator. 

And almost everybody else has said the same, as witness 
the old proverb, " Seeing is believing." Now I will men- 
tion five instances in which people belieye they see some- 

84 



POSITIVISM. 



thing, and do not see it ; in other words, the objective 
antecedent is wanting, and the impression is produced 
partly by the sensory apparatus, partly by the mind itself. 
As I describe these instances one by one, let my hearers 
ask themselves, How does this illusion come about ? Is it 
produced by our optic instrument or by our mental 
activity ? 

First, then. Take a lighted stick, and whirl it rapidly round 
and round. You believe you see a circle of sparks — in 
reality it is no more than a simple train, and on a like illu- 
sion the Catherine-wheel is constructed. Again, put yourself 
in the hands of an optically inclined friend, and let him ope- 
rate upon you thus. He shall place a cardboard down the 
middle axis of your face, quite close against your nose — one 
side of his board, say the right, coloured a brilliant red, 
the left a vivid green. After an instant or two let him sud- 
denly substitute another board, white on both sides. Do my 
young friends guess what will follow ? Your right eye will 
see green, your left red — the reverse of what they saw be- 
fore ; yet neither will see correctly, for both eyes are looking 
at uncoloured surfaces. 

Thirdly, Watch the full moon rising — how large and 
round she looks, resting as it were upon that eastern hill, 
and seen amidst the tops of its forest trees ! How much 
larger and broader than when she hangs aloft in upper sky ! 

85 



POSITIVISM. 



Has every one here learned the true reason why? If not, 
look at her through a slit in a card, and her diameter will be 
the same. Fourthly, A schoolboy is crossing his bedroom in 
the deep dark night, anxiously hoping that his head may not 
come into collision with the bed-post. Though carefully and 
successfully avoiding it, he imagines of a sudden that the blow 
is imminent. Quick as thought he stops to save his head, and, 
behold, the room is as quickly filled with sparks or flames 
of fire. Another moment, and all becomes dark once more. 
I have heard many a schoolboy exclaim over this pheno- 
menon, but never knew one who could explain it. Finally, 
did you ever, on opening your eyes in a morning, close them 
quickly again, and keep them shut, directing them as if to look 
straight forwards ? Most persons of active nervous power, 
after a few trials — say a dozen, or a score — are surprised to 
see colours appear and flit before the sight. Some years ago, 
Germany's greatest poet tried, at the suggestion of her great- 
est physiologist, a series of experiments on these coloured 
images. He found that by an efl"ort of will he could cause 
them to come and go, govern their movement, march, and 
succession. And this took place under no conditions of 
impaired sensation, nor any hallucination of a diseased mind. 
A thoroughly healthy will succeeded in impressing itself upon 
physical instruments, controlling their law, and creating at 

its own pleasure an unfailingly bright phantasmagoria. • 

86 



POSITIVISM. 



Some here may, others may not, have apprehended the 
distinctions between our five cases. The first two are due 
to the sensory apparatus, its optical laws of continued im- 
pression and complementary colour. In the latter three, 
mind intervenes. The enlarged size of the moon occurs 
through rapid comparison, the fiery lights in a dark room 
through instinctive apprehension, both influences of mind 
on the sensory system. The fifth and most interesting of 
all is no bad example of interference between moral and 
material law. The will truly causative (you may remark) 
overrules the natural process of physical impression, alters 
it, and creates a designed effect. I wish I could induce my 
young friends to devise a number of experiments on similar 
mixed cases, and, having tried them, to dissect out their 
real laws. These sharpenings of the critical faculty are 
exceedingly useful — they cultivate clearness; and most 
people know that two-thirds among our mistakes in life are 
caused by confusion of thought. 

Besides all other uses, such lessons teach at once the 
necessity, as we said before, of observing your own obser- 
vations. And as, first, the real witness of every observation 
is our mind ; every fact ^which comes through our bodily 
senses being to us a mental impression, it seems but common 
sense to hear above all things what mind has to say for and 
about itself. Then, secondly, where would be the benefit 



POSITIVISM. 



derived from our observations, if we could not reason upon 
them, or could place no confidence in our own reason- 
ings ? Yet the art of reasoning is so purely a mental pro- 
cess, that it can be represented by symbols as abstract and 
free from material meaning as if they were bare algebraic 
signs. Thirdly, in the most accurate of sciences mind 
extends our knowledge far beyond the circle of observation, 
and gives us axiomatic assurance of its own accuracy. Who 
ever saw, or ever can see, all straight lines in all conceivable 
positions, yet who doubts that throughout the whole universe 
no two straight lines ever did inclose or can inclose a space ? 
And, fourthly, can it be a matter of indifference to any of 
us what evidence the mind offers concerning its own moral 
nature, and what is the value of that^evidence, and the laws 
deducible therefrom? How tmeit thus appears that "know 
thyself " lies at the root of all knowledge, and that the man 
who receives no witness from within can know nothing as he 
ought to know it ! 

Comte swept away all these and the like considerations 
by a neat little fiction of his own. We cannot observe our- 
selves observing, he said, we cannot observe ourselves 
reasoning. So, then, logic becomes a chimera, and psycho- 
logy a word of contempt. Respecting this fallacy, Mr. 
Mill thinks the only wonder is that it should impose on any 
one. Clearly it imposed on Comte himself. But, " what 

88 



POSITIVISM. 

organon," asks Mill, '' for the study of our moral and intel- 
lectual functions does M. Comte offer in lieu of the direct 
mental observation which he repudiates ? We are almost 
ashamed to say it is phrenology ! " Mill regards this state- 
ment as a reductio ad absurdum, but the actual organon 
substituted is more absurd still. Comte's phrenology was 
not the phrenology of Gall or Spurzheim, but a funny small 
bantling of his own, a sort of " infant phenomenon," called 
into existence not without a Positive purpose. In plain 
words, mind was no longer to give evidence respecting itself. 
We must study its laws in brain. How any true correspond- 
ence of brain and mind could be known unless both were 
studied, does not appear. Comte overlooked the question 
in his anxiety to substitute for psychology and its laws a 
bodily function and its laws. Yet his motive appears to 
have been excellent ! He regarded this dwarfed superficial 
phrenology, Mr. Mill tells us, "as extricating the mental 
study of man from the metaphysical stage, and elevating it 
to the positive." The chief gist of which sentence, bewilder- 
ing to the uninitiated, opens up the very core and centre of 
the Positive system — a subject for dissection of some con- 
siderable human interest. 

Each science is brought into the positive stage when it is 
co-ordinated according to positive laws — "systematized," 
Comte would say. He has a perfect mania for systematiza- 

89 



POSITIVISM. 



tionj system is with him ahnost an equivalent for truth. Of 
course, the real value of every system turns entirely on its 
co-ordinating method, or principle of formation; and Comte's, 
we see, was one of positive laws. The nature of these 
laws is, therefore, the essence and turning-point of the 
whole matter. I cannot impress upon you too strongly the 
paramount importance of keeping this truth steadily in view. 

But if any one inquires exactly what these laws are, he 
asks, I fear, a puzzling question. Puzzling, for this reason 
that, say what one will — employ any words, however care- 
fully selected — one may become liable to the charge of 
raising a false impression. Positivist savans themselves do 
not use any uniform phraseology, and many phrases they do 
use are necessarily derived from philosophies most dis- 
edifying to Positive ears. 

Examples showing what sort of law is really meant are 
therefore always welcome ; and few^ could be more instruct- 
ive than this way of making mind Positive. Comte did not 
falter in his purpose. Later on he explained the necessity 
(for his system, you understand) of bringing our intellectual 
and moral phenomena under the same law with other phe- 
nomena of animal life; and reduced them, not to brain 
action pure and simple, but to cerebral functions, controlled 
by the viscera and vegetative movements of our bodily 
existence. 

90 



POSITIVISM. 



Let us look at the meaning of all this. Soul used to be 
conceived of as different in kind from body. The brain, the 
nervous system, the body, were its organs, allies, machines. 
Sometimes they, especially the instruments through which 
the soul more immediately works, exercised reaction on 
their sovereign employer ; they impeded or suspended her 
functions, and troubled her serenity. But though they might 
cloud the manifestation, they could not destroy the essence 
of a living soul. What they did was temporal and transitory; 
but they shall pass away and be dissolved, while soul will 
endure for ever. 

The word mind has been much used to signify soul, as 
acting in and through body. There is, however, some 
vagueness in its employment. Yet we constantly speak of 
the laws of mind, because soul is in this life the partner of 
body ; and therefore known to us as mind, and as mind is. 
studied through its laws. One psychological task has always 
been to separate the pure activity of soul from the mixed 
workings of mind, by examination and cross-examination of 
our internal consciousness. 

You will now easily understand how vast the change 
Comte intended by his physiological organon for the study 
of our moral and intellectual functions. You will see what 
is meant by elevating mental science to the Positive stage, 
and systematizing it under laws which people may variously 

91 



POSITIVISM. 



describe as phenomenal, mechanical, or material; adjectives 
all roughly used to express the same general idea. What 
we took for a spiritual essence is only a developed animal 
nature, the difference between men and beasts of the field 
is not one of kind, but of degree. ManKiND is a misnomer. 
Humanity is (as Comte thought) a higher degree of ani- 
mality. We have no right to suppose a personal immor- 
talit}^ Man may be said to live after death in the memory 
of his fellow-men, but the truly Positive philosopher believes 
in no other deathless existence. What v/e really can see 
and investigate is a vast moving mechanism, our universe. 
Beyond this all knowledge is a blank. We know of nothing 
which set this mechanism in motion ; it may have m.oved 
from all eternity ; it may go on moving everlastingly ; or it 
may wear itself out. Philosophy can teach us no more than 
distinctions and degrees in the phenomenal law which per- 
vades and rules a universe mthout a God. 

Yet Comte said that he was no Atheist. He even de- 
nounced Atheism, and declared it as bad as theology. He 
did not wish to deny, only to ignore God. Neither did he 
desire to appear ungrateful ; (pardon words which sound in 
your ears profanity;) God was a really useful hypothesis 
once ; in the days when men had recently issued from their 
primaeval forests. Thanking the Deity for His provisional 
services, Comte courteously dismissed Him from His throne. 

C2 



FOSITIVISM. 



All this will have seemed to you a most monstrous tissue 
of negations. But Comte held it to be a code of Positive 
faith ; a faith firmly grounded on the self-sufficingness of 
human nature, read according to his version of course — 
void of belief in a personality which survives the grave, 
without knowledge of, trust in, or prayer to God. The 
blessings of this advanced faith he desired to extend far and 
wide. At the present moment his desire is realizing itself; 
for the like attitude of thought has become a favourite posi- 
tion among the savans of our Western world. When it 
penetrates the more active classes, we shall discern it easily 
by its fruits ! what those fruits will be, is a question for 
statesmen and for us all. 

The chief hindrance opposing its spread amongst unso- 
phisticated minds has been a point much dwelt upon of 
old by Plato, and by Cicero after him. It is the protest 
which that irrepressible entity called soul perseveres in 
alleging. We are all apt to shrink from the picture of bodily 
dissolution : 

" To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ; 
This sensible warm motion to become 
A kneaded clod ! " 

But what if the *' delighted spirit " has been developed by 
brain, and with brain must be dissolved ? Our whole distinct- 
ive human life, our mind, moral, intellectual, spiritual, rebels 

9Z 



POSITIVISM. 



against a doom of subjection to that crass material law ! 
Yet can we establish a difference ? Can we show that the law 
of our true being differs from the law of things outside us ? 

This question, unspeakably interesting to every one of 
us, might be put in various shapes. We might ask. Can the 
protest of soul be set down as a mere sentiment only? 
If it were no more than an instinct of our nature, it would 
deserve consideration ; for why should so high and noble an 
instinct be aimless and misleading ? If we cannot trust our 
own souls, what are we to trust ? Phenomena themselves 
are given us within. Mathematical truths, which Positiv- 
ists are obliged to exempt from phenomenal law, have a 
subjective validity — we cannot help thinking them, and we 
cannot think their contradictories. 

But suppose that a future state of recompence with its 
inferential moralities cannot be denied without denying our 
own consciousness — pronouncing the clearest of our intui- 
tions a will o' the wisp — or, sadder still, a corpse light on 
the grave of hope — nay, more, without subverting the law 
which makes human society to differ from animal gregarious- 
ness, and gives to human action its spring, its liberty, its 
life — suppose all this true, what shall, what can we say? 
And such is the issue I propose to try this morning. 

The plan I have devised for trying it fairly is, first, to 
get as clear an idea as short compass will allow of what 

^4 



POSITIVISM. 



Positivism says on our question. Afterwards to state a case 
for moral law by way of antithesis. It is through the law of 
our moral being that we may most readily look for something 
to difference our souls from creatures below them. The 
strain I shall have to put on your attention lies in this ; after 
grasping in brief the Positivist attitude, I must ask that 
you will not t^ke my facts or arguments on trust, but will 
verify each severally by an appeal to your own conscious- 
ness. It is always upon the law deduced from or applied to 
facts that you ought to exercise your greatest vigilance. 
For law interprets facts to us — we might almost say that 
under its manipulation they bend like a nose of wax ; 
nothing, you will remember, so flexible as figures, except 
facts. 

Let me represent these maxims to you under a similitude. 
Everybody has looked (when young at least) through a 
kaleidoscope, and has observed the beauty of its many- 
coloured figures, their symmetrical shapes, and the enchant- 
ment of their succession. What magic creates this phantas- 
magoria ? Some pretty bits of coloured glass, shining 
gewgaws, scraps of lace, fripperies, and other odds and 
ends, are put into a translucent box, and beheld through a 
tube fitted with mirrors which are set at an angle determined 
by optical law. The broken knick-knacks represent the 

facts of everybody's phenomenal kaleidoscope; the reflect- 

95 



POSITIVISM. 

ing angle under which they are seen is its law ; the coloured 
images are everybody's impressions of things, nature, and 
mankind- As long as you live, remember that whenever 
you are contemplating the world's phenomena — whenever 
you see facts of life, either great or small, you are looking 
at them through some optical instrument or another. If its 
law accords with their law, your view is truthful j but then 
it will be all the less pretty, the less symmetrical. There 
axe dark spots in our real world, checks of all sorts, moral 
evil, anguish of heart and conscience, foresights, stern ac- 
countabilities ! You have lost your childhood's m.agic glass, 
and have got a clear reflecting telescope in its stead ! Pity 
to forego the nice kaleidoscope where all was so bright, 
so harmonious, and arrayed in such regular shapes. Yet 
the view it gave was worth what most people's views are 
worth — precisely nothing ! 

Comte had his kaleidoscope. Every systematizer who 
allows no mystery, no darkness anywhere, must keep the 
article; in point of fact, most people enjoy having one. 
Alas ! for the 19th century ! It has such a feverish viewi- 
ness, such a fashion of incessantly turning its magic tube, 
that life seems little else than a dreamy phantasmagoria ! 
To construct a steady reflecting instrument for yourseli 
requires industry, time, and thought, three things which few 

people care to bestow upon their beHefs. Therefore the 

9^ 



POSITIVISM. 



practice is to pick up kaleidoscopes ready-made at a cheap 
rate, and to feel as easy as stern realities will permit on the 
subject of their truthfulness. Romances are the kaleido- 
scopes of one class, cram-books of a second, newspapers of 
a third, self-love the optical law of the greatest number. 
We are met this morning to break up a grand kaleidoscope, 
and to look into its construction. I shall do my endeavour 
to prevent you all from replacing it by any instrument of a 
ready-made sort. The easiest plan for all lecturers is to 
display a series of transparent conclusions ; but I shall pre- 
fer furnishing you with facts and arguments, letting you put 
them together, look at tliem, and verify their law of true 
vision for yourselves. 

Let us see Comte's law first It was, strictly speaking, a 
law of succession and resemblance. You will guess at once 
that were this all we could see in the phenomenal world, our 
insight would be very limited. And Comte's object was to 
limit us. We can never know, Positively speaking, final 
causes ; those which make up the common notion of design, 
purpose, intention. Nor yet any efficient causes ; nothing 
truly productive of an effect, as men usually say. All we 
can know is the middle of a chain of successive phenomena. 
The two ends are absolutely hidden from our eyes. It was 
in this sense that Comte denied causation — his language was 

vigorous; he denounced it as metaphysical, and when Comtr 

91 7 



POSITIVISM. 

nicknames anything metaphysical or theological, he means, 
as everybody knows, Anathema maranatha. 

The difficulty here is palpable. A law of averages — a 
statistical law, as it is often called, does not profess to 
account for anything ; it merely generalizes crude material, 
and gets it ready for scientific thought to work out the true 
law. But a law of succession has an imposing sound, and 
it does in the worst sense impose. The fallacy may be 
shown in an instant. Day and night succeed each other 
regularly. Does either accoitnt for the other ? The rotation 
of the earth is simultaneous with both — it accounts for both. 
Its eftect is to expose the earth's two hemispheres alternately 
to the sun's rays. This rotation coincides again with other 
laws of our planetary system, and they account for it. It 
is on these laws, and not on such grounds as Hume, Comte's 
great Positive antecedent, alleged, that we look for sunset 
and sunrise. AVhen they fail, the system of which our globe 
forms part will have collapsed. 

Such then was the original kaleidoscope of Positivism. 
It was condemned for reasons which will have plainly ap- 
peared to you. Other eyes have sv/ept the field of vision 
this world offers, and other instruments to aid our insight 
have been adopted. 

You will not have failed already to remark the extreme 
vagueness of that word *'law." There are very few English 

98 



POSITIVISM. 



words more vague : it is applied to almost every sort of 
formula, force, principle, idea; besides being misused in 
ways almost innumerable. You must therefore, when busy 
with questions like the present, fix your attention upon the 
adjectives added to it, and the examples selected by way of 
illustration. 

The Positive system is, according to Littre, of immeasur- 
able extent, embracing the whole universe. Thus, whatever 
was conceived in dark preparatory ages, theological or meta- 
physical j whatsoever persons, who philosophize in either of 
those antiquated ways may even now dream ; — if the concep- 
tion cannot be reduced under Positive lav/s, it must be re- 
garded as non-existent. All that really exists is included 
within such laws, the definition of which, therefore, becomes 
a subject of the greatest possible im.portance. They are, 
he says, immanent causes. The room we are in contains 
intelligent and educated people, but how many here could 
define this word "immanent"? It and its correlative, 
transcendent, are in truth metaphysical terms. If you will 
turn to Mellin's Encyclopaedic Word-Book (favourably known 
to metaphysicians for purposes of pillage), you will find 
immanent explained, under the German emheiniisch, into ten 
shades of usage. Probably, in common English Littre 
might have said '' inherent." *' The universe," he writes, 

" now appears to us as a whole, having its causes within 

99 



POSITIVISM. 

itself, causes which we name its laws. The long conflict 
between immanence and transcendence is touching its close. 
Transcendence is theology or metaphysic, explaining the 
universe by causes outside it ; immanence is science, ex- 
plaining the universe by causes within itself."* Now, one 
stock-in-trade example is that a stone falls to the ground by 
virtue of an immanent cause. In plainer words, the stone 
belongs to universal matter of which gravity is an inherent 
law. Next, we find this same example Positively applied to 
the human will. Volition is free just as a falling stone is free; 
it obeys its own inherent law. Further, we read of " the 
rigorous fatalities which make the world what it is." Comte, 
Littre, and others object against calling these fatalities 
materialistic, because they distinguish gradations of law. 
Yet they limit all human knowledge within the materialistic 
circle, and Janet, who refuses to acquit them of Material- 
ism, dwells on the point that, instead of defining mind as 
an unkno^vn cause of thought, emotion, and will, it is said 
to be, ''when anatomically considered, the sum of the func- 
tions of brain and spinal cord ; and when considered 
physiologically, the sum of the functions of brain in con- 
sciously receiving impressions."! We need not wish to dis- 



* Paroles de Philosophic Positive, p. 54. 

f Janet refers to Nysten's Dictioauaire de Medecine, etc., by Littre 
and Robin. 

ICX) 



POSITIVISM. 



pute about words. But suppose it had been stated in plain 
French or English that all known or knowable objects in the 
universe are placed by Positivism under the rule of laws as 
rigorous in their fatality as the laws of matter, would not 
the ultimate point in question have been more tangible, 
more intelligible ? People might indeed have said, " Why, 
after all Positivism comes to the same thing as Fatalism, or 
Materialism ; " and with certain writers this risk may very 
possibly be held a decisive objection. 

Once more, — another explanation given by Littre is, that 
Positivism lies strictly within the "relative." Many here are 
aware how, since Kant's time, England, France, and Ger- 
many have been flooded with metaphysic, good, bad, and 
indifferent, on the relative and the conditioned. Pity that 
Littre should have plunged into these whirlpools ! Ra- 
vaisson refers to Herbert Spencer and Sophie St. Germain 
for the point that this conception, the relative, must always 
imply the existence of an absolute, known or unknown. ^ I 
cannot follow him now, but any one interested in doing so 
will find the subject commenced at page 66 of his " Philo- 
sophic en France," (one of the Imperial Reports), and con- 
tinued through sections 9 and 10. It is a very important 
discussion. Ravaisson stands out amongst Frenchmen as a 
consummate master of his science ; and he inclines to infer 
that Comte tended, and that Positivism generally now tends, 

lor 



POSITIVISM, 



towards a final return to metaphysic. However this may- 
be, I fear I have tired you, and am glad to quit this dry 
part of my lecture, and get away to more common- sense 
ground. 

By way of introducing our most interesting topic, let me 
draw one common-sense conclusion from the difficult tract 
just shot over. During our passage, a thought may have 
flashed upon you which I remember hearing in a Bampton 
Lecture, somewhat to this efi'ect — " Positivism is the most 
negative system of all." It appears hard to avoid this idea; 
for Positivism denies in express terms that human beings 
have any knowledge outside those generalized laws of ex- 
perience which make up the Positive sciences. It denies 
(in a word) the most essential part of what was formerly held 
to be a knowledge of mind, both human and Divine. 

Positive thinkers rebut the charge of negativism this way. 
We confine ourselves, they say, to what we know; we do 
not venture, like Pantheists and Atheists, into the unknow- 
able. We do not deny God, we only ignore Him. We do 
not ask about the first cause of the world, or whether it has 
a constructural final end. Such questions as these are " dis- 
edifying.'' "The Positive philosophy," says Littre, "does 
not busy itself with the beginning of the universe, if the 
universe had a beginning — nor yet with what happens to 
living things, plants, animals, men, after their death, or at 

102 



POSITIVISM. 



the consummation of the ages, if the ages have a con- 
summation."^ Littre's sentence, which I have rendered 
verbatim^ reminds one of the prayer told to Bishop Atterbury, 
as offered by a soldier on the eve of battle : " O God, if there 
be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul ! " I am sorry to 
repeat ill-sounding words again ; but is not this really the 
exact religious attitude of an honest Positivist, who feels 
sometimes touched by visions of possible life after death, 

** Of all the nurse and all the priest have taught ;" 

that is, if we conceive his attitude according to the least 
negative interpretation put upon the system ? 

Continuing this least negative interpretation, let us view 
under its light the Positive cosmology or theory of the 
world's existence ; of creation, — that is to say, if there ever 
was a creation. A stone falls to the ground. Trying to 
account for the phenomenon, we grasp a law inherent in the 
material world. Other phenomena lead us to other laws. 
We contemplate the material world with its laws in opera- 
tion, a magnificent spectacle of moving forces ; an organic 
whole, shining through its own intrinsic glory of never- 
ceasing development. If we turn and pursue the reverse 
road, and trace evolution back to its elementary principles, 
we may dissolve worlds into primordial force, or we may, 

* Paroles de Philosophic Positive, p. 53, 
103 



POSITIVISM. 

as Professor Tyndall suggested at Liverpool, find the All 
in a fiery cloud occupying space. Then comes the com- 
plex question, «What beyond? What before? Whence, and 
How produced ? a Positivist thinker may return one of two 
answers. He may either say, " We do not know," or he may 
say, " Nothing can be known." Take the least negative 
first, as we proposed; it surely deserves this rejoinder: If 
you plead ignorance, but surmise that knowledge is possi- 
ble, you ought not, for reasons valid with every true lover of 
wisdom, to stop here. You are substituting for the ideas of 
creation and first cause, what you call a primordial uni- 
verse, a material condition of some kind, producing pheno- 
mena regulated by inherent laws, successive, perishable, 
and nothing more ! All once believed beyond, a blank ! 
Even the very name of philosophy consecrated by consent 
of ages to the First and to the Last, admonishes you. Re- 
nounce your vocation, deny your name, or proceed. We 
demand a Positive result in the highest sense, not a fog of 
ignorance, not a slough of despond. But if the second 
answer be the true one, if the teaching of Positivism is that 
nothing more can be known, let us be told so in plain 
words. Let no one be charmed into the Positive circle by 
false allurements ; for of all vices treachery and hypocrisy 
are the most cowardly. Are you really wiser than the pagan 
Lucretius? If not, v.-hy boast of 19th century discoveries 

104 



POSITIVISM. 



in wisdom, insight, happiness ? If you have examined the 
relics of a primaeval world, explored the races of living and 
thinking creatures, if you have ascended to the starry firma- 
ment, and traversed its shining hosts, to come back with 
shame and disappointment, and tell us this is your all, our 
all, then indeed the wages of your science is death. While 
you speak your final verdict at least cover your faces, 

** And, sad as angels for a good man's sin, 
Weep to record, and blush to give it in !" 

These thoughts have brought us to the most essential consi- 
derations of this lecture. Whether the Positive savant puts 
in a plea of ignorance or of blank negation, we care not 
We will treat it as a challenge thrown down, and do our 
best to meet it. Succeed or not, we will take no refuge in 
ambiguities, but maintain a truly positive assertion. We 
say that the world we live in is not one world, but two,^ 
distinguishable through the laws by which each is governed. 
There exists such a thing as phenomenal law ; we accept the 
fact. But distinct, broadly distinct, apart in its working, its 
elements, and its final result, is moral law. An appeal lies 
to facts, and wc shall try to justify our assertion. 

The mode of proof now to be adopted is not metaphy- 
sical. I mention the circumstance because investigations 
into mind are apt to be confounded with metaphysic, and 

105 



POSITIVISM. 

are then supposed too difficult to deserve attention. My 
argument will demand nothing beyond a hearing and a scru- 
tiny. It will consist of just so much mental dissection as 
may be needful to show, first, a structural law of our inward 
nature, and, secondly, to illustrate its workings and effects. 
These two sets of facts will be placed side by side, in 
order that each may check the other, and that their coinci- 
dence may also (as I hope it will) furnish a fresh and suflEi- 
cient proof of the contrast between moral and material law. 
Everybody knows how convincing are, and ought to be, facts 
separately ascertainable, yet converging into one and the 
same conclusion. 

One form of speech almost unavoidable ought to be re- 
marked beforehand. I mean the word freedom as applied 
to the human will and its volitions. When compelled to 
use it, I shall do so only in the sense of philosophic as con- 
trasted with theological free will. By philosophic freedom 
I understand that sort and degree of active choice free from 
constraint which is required for the idea of responsibility, 
an idea universally agreed on by divines opposed to each 
other on the point of theological freewill. By this last- 
named idea I understand supposed powers of spiritual 
attainment, which go to make up a notion of self-sufficing 
moral strength. With it the present lecture, being purely 
philosophical, can have nothing whatever to do, but T 

id5 



POSITIVISM. 



should much deplore misconception, because any theory of 
self-sufficingness would be repugnant to my own personal 
convictions. 

Look now at the life of an animal, with senses often more 
instrumentally accurate than ours. Survey the world around, 
which furnishes the objects of his perception and his intel- 
ligence. The mode in which that intelligence acts is held 
to be more or less under the absolute rule of instinct, and 
creatures below man are commonly described as those 
"that nourish a blind life within the brain." Whether 
this be or be not perfectly correct makes no difference to 
our present purpose. The point I want you to fix your 
thoughts upon is the dircciness of relation between the feel- 
ing or intelligent principle of mere animal life, and the 
object perceived, felt, or apprehended. Perhaps it may 
give vividness to your thought, if you figure this relation 
under the similitude of a right line connecting two points — 
object without, apprehension within. The line itself will 
then represent the impulsive activity of a creature, as, for 
example, when a hungry tiger leaps upon his prey. 

Now this directness of action is not the thing most marked 
in our own proper human existence. What is really marked is 
the exact reverse ; the more truly human any action appears, 
the farther is it away from resemblance to that animal charac- 
teristic. Suppose a man acts like a tiger, he is simply brutal ; 

107 



POSITIVISM. 

if he be governed by his feelings, however amiable, we pro- 
nounce him weak or unreasoning. 

Absolutely impulsive doings, such as the indulgence of 
an appetite, blows struck in passion, or even in self-defence, 
we separate from our volitions proper, and call them irrational 
and instinctive. In educating children we check displays 
of impulse, we bid them pause and reflect. And it is 
obvious that education presupposes an educable power or 
principle, which principle self-education (the most important 
training of all) will place in a clear light before you. In- 
terrogate yourselves, then. You will see that the mental 
power you most wish to train and augment is distinguishable 
enough even in the commonest affairs of life. Take a case of 
feeling. Some object — no matter what — kindles an emotion 
within you — anger, wish affection, pursuit, dislike, avoid- 
ance — and you feel strongly impelled to take action there- 
upon. This would be the movement which was imaged to 
our minds as a simple line. But to launch along it incon- 
siderately you would feel neither proper per se — nor yet 
doing what is due to yourself, because it is your human pre- 
rogative to act, not according to impulse, but according to 
reason. And observe, to do, or to forbear doing, is a ques- 
tion by no means determined by finding whether another 
emotion be or be not stronger than the first. What reason 

demands is that the impulse you feel, or it may chance the 

io8 



POSITIVISM. 



Strongest of a dozen impulses, shall become to you an 
object of careful scrutiny. You are bound in honesty to 
scrutinize it ; not only because it exists as an incitement 
felt within yourself, but much, much more because it is felt 
to be your actual self It is your character which gave the 
spring, and lives in the movement to action. Perchance 
this point of character is a hidden nook, an unknown depth 
of feeling or desire, undiscovered, unsuspected by your 
fellow-creatures— a secret of your inner self Nevertheless 
it is amenable to the tribunal of a more inward self still, 
to be brought before it as an object that shall be examined 
and cross-examined, sentenced either to vivid freedom or 
present suppression — it may be even to extinction ever- 
more ! Each human being possesses this wonderful self- 
objectivizing power. He is able to look at himself as a 
NOT-self — a something partitioned off, and external ; to be 
thought about, felt about, reasoned about ; to be controlled, 
chastened, corrected. This power is our inalienable heri- 
tage ; we cannot resign it if we would ; we cannot finally 
suspend its exercise. Mountains could not crush, nor 
oceans drown it; flames of fire never burned it out from 
the breast of one single martyr. Whether we use our birth- 
right for good or for evil, it still remains with us ; when 
we act, our will is not a feeling, an appetition, travelling 
simply from one point to another. It is a movement of 

109 



POSITIVISM. 

our world within, a movement of that microcosm called 
Man. 

Suppose a person resolves to employ this power aright. 
Some wish or feeling, such as might drive a lower creature 
to instinctive action, stirs within him, and becomes the 
object of his contemplation. To the sessions of silent 
thought he summons whatever assistants he can get; the 
witnesses of experience, prudence, duty, the golden rules 
of the Gospel ; whatever seems most proper to determine 
the question at issue, — fitness or unfitness, to act or to ab- 
stain from acting. He says to himself (as all here have 
done a thousand times), " This longing, thought, state of 
mind, is wise or foolish, good or bad, right or wrong ; nay, 
'tis I myself that am so ! " And in thus saying he is con- 
scious of that sort of freedom to will or not to will, which 
makes up responsibility. He does not deny — contrariwise, 
with the might of his whole essential humanity he asserts — 
that the act of will is thus taken out of the direct line of 
inevitable antecedency, away from the physico-mechanical 
series, and enabled to commence a series of its own. In 
a word, his consciousness evidences to him that functional 
law which makes the human soul a thing more wonderful 
than all the inorganic or all the animated universe besides. 
And the law thus evidenced is the law of moral causation. 

I said that our own soul thus becomes to us more wonder- 

IIO 



POSITIVISM. 



ful than all the known universe besides. I might have said 
more mysterious ; so truly sui generis and different from all 
things not ensouled, as to be inexplicable by human sciences, 
an enigma to itself, dwelling alone in its own awful isola- 
tion. Do but think what cause is — nothing less than origin- 
ating power; what then must it be in stern and sad reality 
for a soul to originate a sin 1 Yet we cannot deny the fact. 
We confess it every day, not only in our hearts and deeper 
utterances, but in the commonest though most tremendous 
of words, the word responsibility. If a man were in no true 
sense the cause of his own actions, he could never be held 
responsible either by God or Man. But as long as Justice 
maintains her seat, each criminal will be so held, so judged, 
so recompensed. And the only principle under which Justice 
can justify her judgments is the reality of moral causation. 

If, then, this law be established, we have proved our point. 
Just as we recognize a material world by mechanical law — 
and indeed our knowledge of matter itself is only a know- 
ledge of its laws — so in like manner, and/<^r/ passu, we 
recognize a moral world by its distinctive law. We live, 
therefore, not in one world, 'but in two : 



" Man is one world, and hath 
Another to attend him." 



The point is of surpassing importance ! Upon it turns 

III 



POSITIVISM. 



the whole issue. " Can mechanism — or, as it is vaguely 
called, materialism — be or be not accepted, with its attendant 
theories, as the truth ; that is, our whole truth, all we have to 
live by and to die by ? " Infinitely important issue ! having 
much to do at this very moment with the happiness and real 
good of millions amongst our fellow-creatures and fellow- 
countrymen. It is for this reason Ave must not spare pains 
to demonstrate our moral law, for this reason also we will 
give some passing sentences to show how worthless in argu- 
ment is the sophism most commonly circulated against it. 
Men speak of a ''law of motives," with complete assurance, 
and without seeming to be aware of the twofold fallacy 
underlying it. Writers on the subject furnish statistics of 
suicide, murder, and the like; and then ask how the free- 
dom of moral cause can be compatible with so visible a 
law? But what sort of a law is this ? Clearly not a law 
upon which the results are conditioned, as sunrise on the 
earth's rotation j but a mere generalization, like the laws 
of average before mentioned. Such a law does not govern 
the acts, but the acts the law, or, in plain words, they are 
the law. It is an epitomized result, inferring no more 
consequence to our free moral causation, than a life assur- 
ance infers to the contingency of our individual life or 
death. The sophism would be readily detected if it were 
not for that unfortunate word "motive." People forget that 

112 



POSITIVISM. 

a motive is not a power that compels us, but an object which 
we choose to seek. "Will," we are seriously told, "must be 
determined by the strongest motive." Now if, in thus speak- 
ing, the strongest motive objectively be meant, that is the 
motive essentially and in its own nature the strongest, then 
indeed we may exclaim, "Would that this were true ! " For 
are not right, justice, goodness, absolutely and in them- 
selves the strongest ? Yet men in general fail to pursue 
them j they are chosen by those of whom the world is not 
worthy. But if, on the other hand, the phrase " strongest 
motive " is to be understood subjectively^ and means that 
which on each occasion is felt to be the strongest ; what 
form of sounding words has ever yielded a more barren sense, 
a simpler truism ? " Will must be determined by the choice 
of will." It means this, and nothing more. 

We may sum the whole matter of motive in a single 
sentence. Motives do not make the man, but the man his 
motives. To conceive it otherwise would be to imagine 
each man a mere bundle of instincts, such instincts as we 
calculate with certainty in the brute animals we wish to allure, 
to subdue, or to destroy. 

" Be not like dumb driven cattle," 
says the Psalm of Life, and old Herbert exhorts— 

*' Not rudely, as a beast, 
To run into an action." 

113 8 



POSITIVISM. 



The beast feels an incitement, and rushes direct upon the 
pitfall. It is the prerogative of a true man to subsume (as 
logicians speak) each line of impulse into the circle of his 
own soul j to deliberate in the secret chambers of a being 
impenetrable even to his own understanding, and to put in 
force the result which becomes as it were the free manifesta- 
tion of himself. When therefore you examine the actions of 
a fellow-creature, and discern his motives, you praise or 
blam^e what ? not the motives, but the man. 

Permit me to close this discussion by an example of the 
manner in which we make and unmake our own motives. 

No one present is so young, or so careless, as never to 
have felt the pains of self-reproach. Some light or shade 
of life projects before us the outline of ourself. By virtue 
of the law described, we view and review it, as if it were 
the picture of another being. In contrast with it, we place 
our own ideal, all that our boyhood fondly fancied our 
manhood would become ; the semblances of those we have 
loved and lost ; of the father, who taught us to prize truth 
and virtue above earthly wealth and distinction; of the 
mother, at whose knee we knelt in prayer, and whose up- 
raised eye imaged the serenit}^ of that heaven to which she 
implored us to aspire. These beloved forms, robed in the 
unfading freshness of a love stronger than death, stir our 
heart of hearts, with accents unmistakable. They remind 

114 



POSITIVISM. 



US of what we resolved and trusted one day to be found, in 
thought, ill feeling, and in life. But, close to the glowing 
portrait of our purposed self stands the dwindled figure 
of what we actually are ; and, oh, the shame, the anguish 
of that stern, disappointing comparison! 

Among the lower creatures (we ask in passing) what is 
there to resemble this self-reforming principle ? In the 
domesticated animal, both beast and bird, we see wounded 
affection, grief under a master's anger, and desire to win 
back his love. In the gregarious tribes we find respect for 
a common bond of what we almost may call utility ; but has 
any sense of wrong as wrong, or sin as sin, ever been found 
educable ? Man shows the mighty strength of this principle 
within him, even when he shows it in its most repulsive 
shapes. The remorseful wretch who throws himself beneath 
the wheel of Juggernaut, is a different ki7id of being from 
the horse or dog. And considering the self-interest, self- 
flattery, and self-indulgence arrayed against it, may we not 
say that the root of such passionate remorse has something 
sound in it, else it would long ago have been trodden 
out from the life and heart of mankind ? 

For now, as always, our honest anguish and shame sow 

the appointed seed of our noblest attainments. Those steps 

by which we climb our steep ascent are hewn in the travail 

of our souls. David found it so, when he heard the voice 

115 



POSITIVISM. 

of Nathan saying, "Thou art the man!" and wrote words 
which have come down near three thousand years ; — " The 
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit." " Of all acts," asks 
Mr. Carlyle, '' is not, for a man, repentance the most divine ? 
The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious con- 
sciousness of no sin ; that is death ; the heart so conscious 
is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact ; is dead ; it is 
' pure ' as dead dry sand is pure. David's life and history, 
as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the 
truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and 
warfare here below." Truest emblem indeed ! In it, we 
see, as in a glass, how living in two worlds we cannot but 
have a sympathy with each ; insomuch that every man feels 
himself to be two selves, not one ; a spiritual and a psychical 
man. "There is," says Sir Thomas Browne, "another man 
within me, that's angry with me, rebukes, commands, and 
dastards me." A double consciousness which grows upon 
m.any a soul, until its truer choice and better motives are 
attained : 

" The life which is, and that which is to come. 
Suspended hang in such nice equipoise 
A breath disturbs the balance ; and that scale 
In which we throw our hearts preponderates. " 

This lecture started from the question, what is a pheno- 
menon, and how do we know of its existence ? Seeing that 

ii5 



POSITIVISM. 

our knowledge rests primarily on the evidence of our own 
mind, we drew the inference that Comte committed a fatal 
error when he banished the science of mind, as mind, from 
his cycle. Reviewing his various devices, and some devices 
of his successors, for eliminating psychology, and reducing the 
study of mind to a study of bodily functions, we approached 
the stronghold of Positivism, — law. And, after discussing 
the theories maintained respecting it, we boldly threw down 
our challenge to this effect : law phenomenal or mechanical 
admitted, we assert, the existence of another kind of law. 
We say that the freedom of human choice between evil and 
good is utterly unlike the freedom of a stone which falls by 
mechanical law, and cannot choose but fall. The inference 
from phenomenal law is the existence of a phenomenal 
world. The inference from another existent law is that 
there is another existent world. Man, we affirm, lives in 
both ; has sympathies with both ; and, by virtue of his 
double nature, is a true citizen of both. The ultimate 
principle of man's higher nature is to us inscrutable ; for, 
even as the eye sees not itself, so neither does the spirit of 
a man discern that which makes it spirit. But, though we 
cannot know the soul, we can know much and many things 
about it ; things most important — nay, all-important for us 
to know, since they distinguish the spirit that burns within 
us from matter, from mechanism, and from mere animality. 

117 



POSITIVISM, 



Hence we do not, with the Positivist, ignore the unknowable. 
Contrariwise, confessing our ignorance, where we are igno- 
rant, we strive to observe and gather all we can. 

One thing that can be thus known is the principle 
of moral causation; and this we have inductively investi- 
gated. We began by observing a process in our own minds, 
a process or law of self- objectivity. I am sorry to use such 
an uncouth word ; but it saves a long description, and you 
will all remember the fact. That process carries, on the 
very face of it, adaptation to the purposes of moral choice, 
free from the material necessity which governs a falling 
stone, and disengaged from the control of such impulses as 
the incitement of ruling instincts. We next verify this law 
by observing its operation ; first^ in single acts of the Will 
accompanied, as you will recollect, by distinct consciousness 
of choice and responsibility. It was in respect of this con- 
scious certainty that Dr. Johnson said, " We know we are 
free, and there ends the matter." We verified, a second 
time, the self-objectivising law, by its working and efi"ects 
upon our motives, which it makes and unmakes ; eliminat- 
ing some, adopting others, so as to modify and alter our 
whole real character. Any one who is happy enough to re- 
call the slow advances of successful self-education, or a less 
ordirary process by which old things passed away and all 
things became new, may recollect mth pleasure how this law 

ii8 



POSITIVISM. 



served as an instrument of change; how it placed himself 
before his ov/n inward eye, even daily, in freshly instructive 
lights, awakening new self-questionings, emotions, aversions, 
desires, hopes, and stimulating to new exertions; how it 
opposed itself to the mastery of any single dominant passion^ 
under which we say a man acts mechanically, because he 
has already surrendered himself a slave to its sway ; how 
it became a check upon all day-dreaming or drifting with 
the tide, when again we are said to act mechanically be- 
cause we yield to circumstances as they flow, and live a 
blind life, like creatures that cannot escape the chain of 
Instinct. For, observe : let any instinct, even the noblest, 
be ever so nobly developed, if we act from its impulse only, 
and not from a reflective choice of the prompting which it 
gives, we are living below the image of our true nature, 
because we are not striving to become a law unto 
ourselves. 

You may verify our moral law in numberless ways among 
the common walks of .ife; and it really is a task of no great 
difficulty^ if you take with you the truth that the whole issue 
is summed in one word — Responsibility. A falling stone 
cannot choose but fall ; were a man subject to material law, 
he could have no choice v/hatever. Neither would it make 
any real diflerence, if the Will were impelled by overpower- 
ing motive, and did not make its motive to itself. The 

119 



POSITIVISM. 



slate which sHdes from a roof, and kills a child, we do not 
accuse of murder; we do not attach moral accountability to 
the hungry tiger. It is because man is not impelled like 
stones or tigers, that we hold him responsible. And w^e 
praise or blame in the highest degree his most deliberate 
acts. The wrong he does with malice aforethought is a 
crime in the strongest sense ; the good he works with con- 
siderate purpose we esteem his highest well-doing. In our 
time the wills of individual men have changed the destinies 
of nations ; and any one who reads books, reviews, or news- 
papers sees a vigorous use of that word responsibility. No 
one doubts that these powerful wills are the true causes of 
effects felt throughout all Europe, effects which will remain 
when those who caused them are in the grave ; nay, even 
when generations — perchance dynasties — shall have passed 
away. 

In lower life, we honour the truly causative man who 
conquers a habit of intemperance or any evil passion : it is 
greater to overcome one's self than to conquer many cities. 
We deem every one accountable for what he allows, or dis- 
allows, in relation to his God, his fellows, or himself. In a 
word, we consider each man so far the true cause of his own 
conduct, as to load him with responsibility 

Yes, responsibility ! Do not shrink from the thought ; 
it is wholesome for all. Do but practise self-control enough 

I20 



POSITIVISM. 



to look yourself with honest purpose in the face when you 
are about to act, you will never suppose that you act 
mechanically, and you will seldom act amiss. If you wish 
to benefit your countrymen, inculcate the grand lesson of 
responsibility ; for what well-informed person doubts that 
one main root of our present social and religious ailments 
lies in compromise with known immoralities, indolent ac- 
quiesence in hollow words, and lifeless outside shows, where 
ought to be heard and seen the rigid truths of account- 
ability, duty, consistency? — all impossible without a practical 
law of self-scrutiny and self-control. Yet further : Responsi- 
bility is also an undeniable witness to a world of life beyond 
death. Just as even Herbert Spencer himself has remarked, 
that the idea of relativity involves the correlative idea of an 
absolute \ even so, in thought, responsibility involves its 
correlative belief, a recompence ! But, in morality, the 
evidence is stringent beyond expression. For, the idea of 
responsibility is fixed in the nature of things ; unchange- 
able, eternal. And it contains in itself the loftier idea of 
personality. Leading us to look for a world of righteous 
recompence, it leads also to belief in a personal Being, 
before whom we are responsible, and who will award to each 
of us our recompence. David travelled the same road to 
the same conclusion, when he looked round upon men, who 
lacked mercy because they lacked justice, and said, ^' Unto 

121 



POSITIVISM. 



thee, O Lord, belongetli mercy : for thou renderest to every 
man according to his work." 

Did I not feel that my strain upon your attention must 
now cease, I should have liked to show at length how the 
law by which we discover moral causation, may be verified 
everywhere in the whole province of mind. It is difficult, 
for instance, to look at the perplexing questions raised about 
language, without perceiving that there runs through its 
purely human formation the articulate results of an element 
resembling internal dialogue ; in other words, a law of self- 
objecti vising representation. In art, again, the perpetual 
efforts of ages is to present our human manifoldness of 
thought, feeling, and idea, before our one individual self. 
Hence the art formula of multeity in unity. And what is 
the true bond of society as distinguished from gregarious- 
ness? Is it not the Gospel's golden rule? But how can 
our neighbour be viewed as a second self, unless self has 
been already objectivised before our moral intuitions ? AVe 
might follow the same thread throughout the conditions of 
all philosophy. 

The one thing we have to remember In every research 
concerning man is that education, whether of self or others, 
implies an educable principle ; a germ, of which education 
and attainment are the bud, the blossom, and the fruit. 
Therefore, if we want to know Humanity, we must look to 

122 



POSITIVISM. 



the educated human being. The philosopher, the artist, the 
thinker of every sort, must have risen into clearness ere he 
can become a typical man. Is it not, therefore, a mistake 
to appeal for theories of human nature to the statistics 
(always statistics !) of ignorance and savagery ? When 
modelling our physical form, Buonarotti did not seek his 
type in hospitals for maimed or distorted limbs, and exclaim, 
Behold, such is man ! Curious too, and contradictory, the 
way in which appeals to barbarism have worked. In the 
1 8th century we used always to hear of that golden age, 

** When free in woods the noble savage ran, 
And man, the brother, lived the friend of man. " 

In the 19th, savage life is cannibalism, superstition, cruelty, 
terrible, revolting, loathsome; perchance, time must yet pass 
before we learn justice to our fellows of any age ! Meanwhile, 
we may feel sure that our human ideal is not to be found in 
the frost-bitten rickety infant species ; nor yet in its dwarfed 
and stunted adult ; the cretin and the imbecile will not give 
its lineaments ; and it may be hard to say which is least 
like a true man, the undeveloped or the perverted creature. 
For example, what superiority in moral height has the savant^ 
whose self-satisfied science ignores or denies a God, over 
the poor pigmy barbarian, unskilled in the use of fire, and 
living upon berries and insects, who props himself against a 

123 



POSITIVISM. 

tree with earthward face, and prays, saying, " Yere^ if indeed 
thou art, why dost thou suffer us to be killed ? Thou hast 
raised us up. Why dost thou cast us down ? " '^ Better 
perhaps the rude stammering of our race's childhood than 
its half-speechless, half-paralyzed old age ! 

And here the argument of this lecture ends. Of causation 
in general, and the grand subject of design, it has not been 
my hint to speak. These vast topics have fallen into higher 
hands than mine. My aim was limited to finding the 
differentia of man — the moral characteristic which places 
him in contrast with physico-mechanical laws. 

It occurs to me, however, that you m^ay employ ten 
minutes not unpleasantly, upon what we can hardly help 
calling the romance of Positivism. The story, taken from 
first to last — part comic, part tragic — is as wild and weird 
as one of the Frenchman Dore's pictures, — a story too 
strange to be thought true, if it did not happen to have 
been true ! It has also its stinging lessons, and they follow 
naturally \ evolved, as it were, from the motley and mystify- 
ing commencement. 

Comte's life has been written by friend and foe. For 

fulness of detail the right book is by his disciple and 

executor. Dr. Robinet, who has just figured among those 

who rule in the Commune of Paris. Robinet is very in- 

* Harris's Highlands of CEthiopia, vol. iii. p. 63. 
124 



POSITIVISM. 

teresting, for he thoroughly beHeves in his master, and 
accepts the whole Comtist religion, calendar and all, which 
Littre and others reject. No reproach this to Comte's 
biographer, for that same worship is celebrated in our cooler 
atmosphere of England. The Pall Mall Gazette has, by its 
notices, made the celebrations widely known. There is an 
account of the grandest yearly solemnity which will suffice 
many, and excite the curiosity of more, in its number for 
January yth, 1868. It is not hard to see that the worshippers 
differ from the recusants by a strong feeling that they cannot 
live upon axioms sounding like negatives. They want senti- 
ment, emotion, excitement to sustain them. Let us observe 
how Comte caught the first glimpse of this requirement. 

His life was sombre — a boy delicate and fractious, dis- 
liked by his masters, turned out of the Polytechnique, 
repudiated by his great socialist teacher St. Simon. His 
family relations not happy, his marriage least of all. We 
cannot wonder at vagaries, for he had a real fit of rampant 
insanity, and after release from an asylum had nearly 
drowned himself in the Seine. His wife found him in- 
tolerable, and left her home. Mr. Mill speaks of her 
respect for him ; — it was oddly testified after his death, for 
she pleads in law that he was a madman, an atheist, and 
immoral ; repudiates his will, and seizes the consecrated 
relics of his dwelling. Littre supported her against those 

1^5 



POSITIVISM. 



who, like Robinet, thought her Uttle less than blasphemous. 
If she had appeared m an English law court, we should 
have known more truth than we do. 

Let us now look at such facts as we have from the more 
favourable side. The man lived a lonely life, as became a 
sort of conceptual alchemist, sustained by a belief that he 
was turning men's leaden thoughts into his own pure gold. 
One brilliant projection of his has made him the idol of 
Positivists. I confess it puzzles me, among many others, to 
imagine how a qualified critic can treat such a philosophic 
solvent either as true or as original. It supposes the history of 
all human thinking to pass necessarily through three stages, 
theology, metaphysics, positive truth ; and that the world 
makes progress accordingly. We will hope that the thing 
called theology, a benighted belief in the government and 
intervention of supreme will, is not altogether extinct in this 
age of progress ; if it be so, Mr. Froude encourages us to 
look for a revival. Among lesser matters, the hypothesis of 
metaphysical cookery is an idea one fails to realise. Was it 
a banquet with joints cut Laputa-like, after some fashion of 
concepts, or syllogistic figures ? Was it a " feast of reason 
and a flow of soul," or, more probably, an abstraction pure 
and simple, as if a man could 

*' Cloy the hungry edge of appetite 
By bare unagination of a feast " ? 

126 



POSITIVISM. 



Comte's comicalities strike most people all the more 
because he writes on, always utterly insensible to his own 
comedy. If any one wishes for a serious critique in small 
compass, I may mention Stirling's appendix to his transla- 
tion of Schwegler's Handbook ; Whewell in his Philosophy 
of Discovery, and elsewhere. 

Comte was most confiding in his own theory. Littre is 
not so confident, for he has another theory of his own. But, 
putting aside the question of its verification, we may remark 
that in the rough idea Comte showed himself before his age. 
Positive thinkers have busied themselves with physical 
evolution ; for example, the development of a brain from an 
oyster or an eozoon ; but Comte was intent upon mental 
evolution.^ Man need not much care about the congeners 
of a body sprung from earth; but soul is another thing. 
We trust our own spirit, as carrying some image and super- 
scription of God ; we feel and conceive it to be different in 
kind from sensitive life ; v/e love to think of it in its finality as 
a spark flowing out from Divine Light; a breath breathed into 
body from above. In the reverse of this belief there is doubt- 
less an element unfavourable to happiness ; it makes some 
men cynics, some pessimists, some simply victims. Comte's 
infinite self-satisfaction probably saved him from self-torture. 
But we judge that he felt his condition deeply, from the rap- 
ture with which he hailed a new and brilliant discovery ! 

127 



POSITIVISM. 



Yes, it was the most wonderful of all his discoveries ; he 
one day found an unsuspected law of life within himself; he 
discovered that he had a heart. 

To many, this is the black spot on Comte's memory; 
they cannot receive his love, nay, his frantic adoration, of 
the lonely wife of a convict, absent in the gallies, as a piece 
of pure Platonism. Had Madame Comte's allegations been 
sifted fully, Ave might have known all. As it is, I for my 
ow^n part like to think him innocent; he was mad from 
disease, and perhaps from conceit ; a conceit, says Mr. Mill, 
too colossal to be beUeved without reading him up ; but I 
trust he was not immoral. His letters are against it, the 
lady's face is against it, and above all, there is against it the 
lasting effect upon himself. After a year's happiness to 
Comte, she died and left him, as he thoroughly supposed, 
an enlightened and a religious man. 

Poor Comte ! His sweeter life was buried with the 

dead, who to him could never rise again. His religion was 

no more than a funereal cult; a veil thrown over it, no 

hope, no thought of reunion ! The episode of Clotilde was, 

in itself, one of those touches of nature which make the 

whole world kin ; the brief, bright, and long sad experience 

the solitary had of his heart ; the love, the loss, the unfor- 

getting sorrow ! But, did it not prove, beyond the force of 

reclamation to disprove, that Comte's system ends, at last, 

128 



POSITIVISM. 



in what is commonly called materialism ? its faith (or nega- 
tion of faith) being in effect this, that we look for entire 
human dissolution coincident with bodily death. And the 
end flows naturally from the beginning; all we think is 
phenomenal, all we know is phenomenal, first and last. 
Our life is only a phenomenon ; and death, death joins us to 
the unreturning past. We are absorbed, all that is good 
of us, into general and generic humanity; an Eidolon, 
called the Great Being for our comfort ; as if a name (what's 
in a name ?) could console us ! The race we may have 
tried to serve is to be our Euthanasia, our sepulchre, I had 
almost said our cenotaph ! 

Strange thought, not without a kind of serpent- fascina- 
tion ! Epidemic in England now, gaining force from its 
unhallowed audacity ! The consistent pessimist, who rates 
men at the worst, thinks the worst in himself, and does the 
worst by all others, and by himself, if he is but fixed in this 
unbelief, need not fear what the world, man, or God shall 
do unto him. It is the old whisper, " Ye shall be as gods ! " 
'Tis superhuman to sit and watch the storm ; to have our 
strong sensations, illusions they are called in France ; blood- 
poisons which circulate in our life, working hot passion and 
mischief ; sorrow to many a loving, many a confiding heart ; 
passion, mischief, sorrow, what matters it ? there comes an 
opiate by-and-by ! The man of over^\Tought brain, used 

129 9 



POSITIVISM. 



up, worn-out feelings ; the distempered dreamer ; the reck- 
less worker of wrongs ; the disappointed striver for an 
earthly crown, all shall have their common slumber at last ; 
unconscious, impervious, unbroken. I will read you three 
stanzas from a longer piece written by one not unknown always 
where that tree of knowledge grew : — 



** Cessation is true rest, 
And sleep for them opprest ; 
And not to be, — ^were blest. 

Annihilation is 

A better state than this ; 

Better than woe or bliss. 



The name is dread ; — the thing 
Is death without its sting ; 
An overshadowing:.'^ 



If such be the thought to them whose natural heritage 
stands strong, fringed with luxurious hope to live beloved, 
to die regretted ; what will the " overshadowing '' be when it 
passes, like a plague breath, over the children of toil and 
anxiety, over them whose life is at best hard, and their lot 
depressed and without " illusions " ? Will they not want 
their strong sensations ? Will they respect any law, human 
or divine, wliich stands between them and their enjoyments? 
Will they not crush all who bar their pleasures, aye, choke 
them m their own blood ? Why not ? The opiate comes 

130 



POSITIVISM. 



to all at last. 'Tis an act of oblivion ! The overshadowing 
will cover all. 

And this is the coming creed of the 19th century. To 
return to Comte, about whom I might say much, but must 
not ; — of course, he had no foresight of anything worse than 
an immediate realization of his crowning ideas — sociality, 
fraternity, Positivism. Europe split into small states ; 
women made incapable of property, but held objects of 
religious worship ; men worked on a communistic principle ; 
an oligarchy of rich ; a spirituality of Positive believers, 
with a supreme infallible pontiff at their head ; Paris the 
seat of infallibility and of order. Clotilde had shown 
Comte a principle antagonistic to, and predominating over, 
all egoism j Altruism was to burn out of men all selfish 
aims, nay, the ordinary feelings of a man ! A rigorous rule of 
life was to aid, and a religion without a God to enforce, this 
new law. Two hours a day, divided into three private 
services, were to be spent in the adoration of Humanity 
under the form of a living or dead woman. The image of 
the fair idol, dress, posture, everything was to be brought 
distinctly to mind ; and the whole soul to be prostrated in 
her honour. Comte, it has been said, gave woman every- 
thing except justice. 

There is a grave moral in this tale. Theology was ex- 
tinguished ; but the desire to worship burned on — a fire un- 

131 



POSITIVISM. 



quenchable. Is that desire, or is it not, a broad reality, an 
inalienable truth of our nature ? Comte accepted it for him- 
self, and not for himself alone, but for our whole human race. 
Along with it he accepted the only principle which could 
bestow universal validity. Our moral intuitions were ac- 
knowledged safe guides, and something more \ the rulers of 
an intellectual world, the revealers of truth higher than all 
beside. Often and often he asserted the dominion of 
heart over mind. Probably, if Comte had lived longer he 
would have acknowledged other revelations of our moral 
nature. Moral causation, for example. That strange phrase 
of his — " a modifiable fatality," self-contradiction in words, 
suicide in sense, what did it portend ? Was it the first sound 
of a marriage-bell, freedom and duty once again united ? A 
change of his system wonderful to contemplate, yet not more 
wonderful than the state in which he left it 

One cannot help here asking how matters would have 
stood if Comte had died without knowing his Clotilde. 
How incomplete according to his own account his philoso- 
phy ! how wanting in that which perfected the whole ! A 
notable fact this, throwing great light on the value of such- 
like systematization which, after all, much resembles secre- 
tion from that interesting viscus, the system-maker's own 
particular brain. And there is another fact quite as notable. 
How curious that Comte should have lived so long without 

132 



POSITIVISM. 

discovering whatever truth his own heart and a strong 
human affection disclosed to him ! Hence we might illus- 
trate and confirm a previous remark, that any one not living 
a truly human life — call him undeveloped, uneducated, 
dwarfed, or immature — is no typical man; and if we believe 
ancient maxims, scarcely a learner in philosophy, certainly 
not a judge of its highest and widest problems. 

The most notable fact and greatest surprise of all is, that 
Comte's prayer without petition, his passionate self-mesme- 
rizing adoration, his religion without a God, should have 
taken any hold on men. No one can transfer to others his 
private sorrow or his private joy; it is hard for a man to 
get his thought understood, harder still to make common 
pasture of his heart. But Comte devised extraordinary pro- 
pagandist expedients j those who consider his developments 
mere madness, should explain why sane people have ac- 
cepted them. Comte set no value on Protestantism in any 
shape. The religion of his own country he carried back to 
mediaeval forms, and then travestied it. There were many 
festivals, a calendar of saints, nine sacraments, and a horri- 
ble caricature of the Christian Trinity. This idea crowned 
his sociology, which I need hardly say was communistic 
socialism, enfolding (as socialism always must enfold) and 
scarcely veiling the most iron of despotisms, both temporal 
and spiritual. His mind delighted in contemplating a 

133 



POSITIVISM. 

synthesis of the great Fetish, Earth, with the great Being 
Humanity; which last somehow assumes on occasion a 
feminine gender. 

To Clotilde, symbolizing that supreme object, Clo tilde, 
his noble and tender patroness, he transferred Dante's hom- 
age of Beatrice ; addresses to the mother of our Lord \ and 
stranger than all, the prayer of Thomas a Kempis to Almighty 
God, "Amem te plusquam me, nee me nisi propter te" — 
"May I love Thee more than self, nor self at all except for 
Thee." Now consider ; when Comte died, sixty-four years 
had not quite elapsed since goddesses of Reason were wor- 
shipped in the cathedral and other churches of Paris. Upon 
each high altar a fair woman, chosen for her faultless beauty, 
sate enthroned, her feet resting upon the consecrated slab. 
Gaily clothed in tunic and Greek mantle, she was so dis- 
played by a torch behind her throne, so elevated above her 
worshippers, as to attract from Phrygian cap to Italic shoe 
their passionate gaze and adoration. Low down beneath 
her footstool lay the broken symbols of a faith then declared 
effete and passed away ; just as half a century afterwards 
Comte declared theology passed away. Music sounded, 
incense smoked. Bishop Gobel, who assisted at a parody of 
sacred rites, wept tears of shame, but in fear and trembling 
he assisted. The object of this mad mockery of religion, 
this empire of heart over mind, this woman-worship, was 

134 



POSITIVISM. 



to proclaim afresh Fraternity, Progress, Sociality. Sociality, 
for the supposed law of which final development Comte 
worshipped humanity and Clotilde — but disowned immor- 
tality and God. 

These two madnesses, how near akin, how far apart were 
they ? The world is not really made young by destroying 
old things; yet the path of i8th century madness lay through 
fire and blood. Its deeds are sometimes spoken of, even 
now, as great crimes ; but no great crime is criminal in the 
sight of men whose life is godless, dark, and unsubstantial. 
Horrors pass before them like unrealities. *' The world," 
writes Mercier on the trial of Louis XVI, — " The world is 
all an optical shadow." In our 19th century life, 'tis a skil- 
fully prepared overshadowing, beneath which men beat their 
brows till their blood-shot eyes see red. "I see red," ex- 
claimed Eugene Sue's ruffian, " and then I strike with the 
knife."* 

* While these sheets were passing through the press, I read in the 
Pall Mall Gazette for April 24th, as follows : One of the Communist 
papers, the Montague, writes : " Education has made sceptics of us ; the 
Revolution of 187 1 is atheistic ; our Republic wears a bouquet of immor- 
telles in her bosom. We take our dead to their homes, and our wives 
to our hearts without a prayer. Priests ! throw aside your frocks, turn 
up your sleeves, lay your hands upon the plough, for a song to the lark 
in the morning air is better than a mumbling of psalms, and an ode to 
sparkling wine is preferable to a chanting of hymns. Our dogs that 
used only to growl when a bishop passed will bite him now, and not a 
voice will be raised to curse the day which dawns for the sacrifice of the 
Archbishop of Paris. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the world. 



POSITIVISM. 

Let me end by telling you a dream, which is not all a 
dream. 

A company of savants were seen in the visions of the 

night, busy with a new scientific invention. Earth, they 
argued, earth has her volcanoes, her burning exhalations; 
men have electric lights, fires, gas lamps, furnaces. These 
make up the world's proper illumination. The effect in- 
tended was, therefore, to darken the air we breathe, so that 
no rays from the upper sky should pass through it. The 
inventors hoped that a district, a country, nay, even a world, 
might thus be overshadowed by a gloom impervious to 
moon and stars by night, to sun by day ; and the human 
eye see no changes, save those which the earth's activity, or 
human power and skill, might produce. Terrestrial and 
artificial alternations excepted, all was to be changeless as 
winter midnight — deep impenetrable darkness ! It was seen 
slowly, very slowly, to descend. In thirty years the men 
of science hoped and purposed its perfection. 

Did those who had previously known the beautiful light 
of heaven, who had bathed and basked in the life-giving 
sunbeam, feel happy, or even calm, when they saw their 

The Commune has promised us an eye for an eye, and has given us 
Monseigneur Darboy as a hostage. The justice of the tribunals shall 
commence, said Danton, when the wrath of the people is appeased ; 
and he was right. Darboy ! tremble in your cell, ior your day is past, 
your end is close at hand." 

136 



POSITIVISM. 



children and children's children robbed of celestial glory 
and gladness ? 

Yet there is one thing worse than a world without a sun — 
you know what I mean — Humanity without a GOD. 



Postscript. 



The Lecturer purposely abstained from reading Professor 
Huxley's acute critique on Positivism until this Lecture had 
gone to press. He now strongly recommends his auditors 
to read No. viii. of the Lay Sermons. 

Should any reader find difficulties in pages 23 — 25 of the 
foregoing Lecture, he will do well to peruse Littre's " Auguste 
Comte et la Philosophie Positive/' chapter iii., particularly 
pp. 42, 43. 



137 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 

BY THE VERY REVEREND 

R. PAYNE SMITH, D.D., 

DEAN OF canterbury; LATE REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, OXFORD. 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



The duty which has been imposed upon me to-day by 
the Christian Evidence Society is, I conceive, to state as 
cleariy as I can, what is our ground for believing that 
a revelation is not only possible, but is a necessary 
part of the system of this world. As the programme 
further joins science and revelation, I conceive that I am 
debarred from any but a strictly scientific proof. We 
may reasonably infer the probability of a revelation from 
God's necessary attribute of love. We may ourselves feel 
morally sure that a creature, approaching so nearly to the 
spiritual world, and capable of so much good as is man, would 
not be left by his Maker in that miserable state of vice and 
misery in which we find ourselves. There are many good 
and weighty reasons for believing that God would give us 
a revelation, and that the Christian religion is God's re- 
velation — reasons drawn from the nature of God, from the 
actual condition in which man is placed, and from the 

141 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



direct teachings of Holy Scripture — all these, like a cord 
of many threads that cannot easily be broken, serve to 
confirm the faith of the believer, but I must forego their 
use. In confining myself to what I conceive to be the 
strictly scientific basis of a revelation, I would, never- 
theless, beg you to remember that the evidences of Chris- 
tianity are cumulative. They cover a vast field, and it is 
in their united force that their strength lies. The very 
vastness of the field often invites attack. Some outlying 
work seems capable of overthrow. Some discovery in 
the domains of history, of philology, or of physical science, 
seems to provide new weapons for the assault. Possibly 
not all the arguments used in defence of Christianity will 
endure the test of close and accurate examination. Pos- 
sibly, too, in our views of the nature of Christianity, and 
in our exegesis of the Scriptures, we have arrived only at 
partial truth, and do not distinguish with sufficient accuracy 
between what is certainly revealed, and what is nothing more 
that a possible explanation of the Divine word. There are, 
moreover, I will candidly confess, difi&culties in the way of 
faith. However new may be the form of the attack, and how- 
ever modern the materials which it uses, yet the strength of 
the attack lies in real difiiculties, which are no new matter, but 
have ever lain deep in the minds of thoughtful men. I do 

not believe that belief is a thing easy of attainment, any 

142 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



more than virtue is. I believe that both are victories, 
gained by a struggle — gained over opposing forces.^ But 
as certain as I am that this present state of things was in- 
tended to train man to virtue, though I cannot answer all the 
objections brought against the system of the world being 
exactly what it is, nor solve all the doubts and difficulties, 
moral and metaphysical, which surround us : so I am 
convinced, in spite of similar difficulties in the way of re- 
ligion, that belief, and not unbelief, is the end at which 
man ought to aim. I believe that man was intended to 
attain to a higher and more perfect state than that in which 
he now finds himself, and that he can only attain to it by 
virtue and faith ; but as the very value of these lies appa- 
rently in their being won by an effort, long and earnestly 
maintained, I am not surprised at the existence of diffi- 
culties, least of all of such difficulties as arise from our 
ignorance. Still belief would be unnecessarily* difficult,, 
and we may even say, morally impossible, if the sum of 
the arguments in defence of a revelation did not largely 
exceed the sum of the arguments against one. With 
these arguments I have to-day nothing to do. The evi- 
dences of Christianity, external and internal, will be treated 

* I use this word because if the value of faith and virtue consists ia 
their being a discipline, while this implies the existence of difficulty, it 
also limits the degree of the difficulty. 

143 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



of by others. My business is to show that a revelation 
was to be expected ; that it was probable, or at all events 
possible, and, therefore, that the evidences of Christianity 
have a claim upon the consideration of every right think- 
ing man. In showing that a revelation was to be expected, 
I shall at the same time show what is the exact position 
which it holds, and in what way revealed knowledge differs 
from all other knowledge, scientific and unscientific. 

Now the argument which I shall use as my proof of 
the possibility of a revelation is simply this, that in the 
present system of things we find no being endowed with 
any faculties without there being also provided a proper 
field for their exercise, and a necessity imposed upon 
that being of using those faculties. In this statement I 
assume nothing. I do not assume that there is a God 
who made these beings. I do not assume that they were 
made or created ; still less do I assume that they were in- 
tended to use their faculties. I put aside all theories of 
design and causation, not because I do not believe that 
they possess force, but because the actual facts which I 
see around me, or which I am taught by scientific men, 
are enough for my proof. The only thing which I assume 
is, that the laws of nature are universal ; and I assume 
this simply because it will be readily granted me. The 

universality of nature's laws compels us to admit that a law 

144 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



which holds good in all known cases, will necessarily hold 
good in all cases whatsoever. 

Our whole language is so essentially based upon re- 
ligious ideas that it would be very difficult for me to use 
only neutral words. But in using religious words, I wish 
them to be understood in a neutral sense. If I speak of 
creatures, I mean only beings, things which exist now, or 
have existed. If I speak of them as endowed with 
faculties, I merely mean that they possess them. By 
nature, I mean simply the present state of things, 
whether designed by an intelligent mind, or a mere 
come-by-chance. I look simply around me at what is — 
or at all events appears to be — and I find myself in a 
world in which there is a very exact correspondence be- 
tween the endowments and faculties of every existent 
being, and the state of things in which it happens to be. 

So exact is this correspondence, that if you give Pro- 
fessor Owen a bone, he will tell you to what order of 
animals its owner belonged, what were its habits, the 
nature of its food, of its habitat, and mode of life. Nature 
works out this correspondence even to the most minute 
detail. By looking at the bone of a quadruped we can tell, 
not merely great things about it, but such trifles as which 
leg it used first in getting up from the ground. For nature 
is so undeviating that the outward habits, even in things 

145 10 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



of no apparent moment, correspond to the internal con- 
formation. 

Now, possibly, it will readily be granted that such is the 
present state of things. Whatever may have been the 
stages through which we have, or have not, passed, we now 
find ourselves in a world of apparent cause and effect — 
full of infinitely varied forms of life, but of which none are 
purposeless. I cannot upon this point bring forward a 
better witness than Professor Huxley, who, in his most in- 
teresting essay on Geological Contemporaneity (Lay Ser- 
mons, p. 236) speaks as follows : — " All who are competent 
to express an opinion upon the subject are, at present, 
agreed that the manifold varieties of animal and vegetable 
form have not either come into existence by chance, nor 
result from capricious exertions of creative power ; but that 
they have taken place in a definite order, the statement of 
which order is what men of science term a natural law." 
The whole chain of animal and vegetable life seems to 
this great authority so perfect and complete, that even the 
variations which have taken place in it, have been governed, 
he considers, by a law, that is, a regular and orderly suc- 
cession. These variations have been the result, apparently, 
of certain changes in the external state of things, to which 
the external conformation of the animal has somehow or 

other been made to correspond. But as Professor Huxley 

146 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



points out, these variations have been confined to very 
narrow limits. When people speak of the enormous 
changes which have taken place in the living population 
of the globe during geological eras, they refer, he says, to 
the presence in the later rocks of fossil remains of a vast 
number of animals not discoverable in the earlier rocks ; 
but the fossils which you do find in the early rocks diflfer 
but little from existing species. (See p. 238.) He thus 
negatives on sure grounds the idea that a state of things 
ever existed on this globe essentially unlike what exists now. 
What then exists now ? I answer, first of all a vast 
chain of vegetable life, fitted in every portion of it to find 
its own subsistence, and to propagate its species. Its main 
function is to " manufacture out of mineral substances that 
protoplasm, upon which, in the long run, all animal life 
depends." (Lay Sermons, p. 138.) I need not detain you 
by enumerating the many various contrivances by which 
plants are enabled to manufacture food for us out of carbon? 
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen — substances upon which, 
in their original state, animals cannot feed — nor the still 
more curious and elaborate processes by which their fecun- 
dation, and the propagation of each species is provided for 
— processes which seem often to require the intervention 
of animal life. I need not detain you upon this point : 
you will readily grant that this correspondence does 

147 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



exist. If a plant is not suited to its habitat, and 
cannot use its natural powers, nature imposes upon it 
the severe penalties — first, of degradation, and then of 
death. 

Upon the animal world she imposes just the same 
penalties. There is neither excess nor defect in her 
operations."^ Whatever she gives must be used, but 
animals, being governed in the main by instincts, have no 
choice. They necessarily employ all their living powers, 
and appa.rently have no powers beyond those indispensable 
for their existence. This point, however, I will not press, 
though it seems to follow from the fact asserted by Pro- 
fessor Huxley, that no important difference can be observed 
between the fossil remains found in the earliest strata, and 
animals of the same species and order existent now. (See 
pp. 241, 242, and for vegetables, p. 240.) For, as he 
tells you, facts establish a scientific law — law in the 
mouths of scientifie men, meaning an established order of 
facts. Well then ! I will put this fact of absence of progress 
aside, and with it the corollary of the absence of latent 



♦"Rudiments," so far from disproving, prove this. A rudiment 
shows that nature might have given more, but has not done so. Why ? 
Because the further gift would have been useless, for instance, man 
would not have been benefited by being able to feel with his eye-brows. 
(See Darwin, "Descent of Man," L 25.) 

148 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



powers.* But of actual powers it is evident that animals 
do use them all, and have to use them all. So close, too, 
is the agreement between the powers and the external 
position of every animal, that a change in its external 
relations will modify its powers to a certain extent. But 
only to a certain extent; there are fixed limits to the 
adaptability of those living powers. If the changes are 
sue ash to occasion a more active exercise of its living 
powers, the animal increases in strength, size, and beauty ; 
if unfavourable, but still permitting some use of its powers, 
it dwindles and decays. But pass the appointed bounds 
and the animal dies. Nature is exacting the penalty of 
the non-use of what it has given. Nature exacts a severe 
penalty for the mis-use, and the last and final penalty for 
the violation of her laws. I do not know that an ascidian 
jelly-bag has any other faculties than those of sucking in 
water, and of sticking to a stone.f But this I know, that 
if it does not use all the powers it possesses and suck in 

* Professor Huxley's words are, **'In these groups there is abundant 
evidence of variation — none of what is ordinarily understood as pro- 
gression ; and if the known geological record is to be regarded as even 
any considerable fragment of the whole, it is inconceivable that any 
theory of a necessarily progressive development can stand, for the nume- 
rous orders and families cited afford no trace of such a process." 
(p. 245-) 

t Darwin, ** Descent of Man," i. 205. s 

149 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION 



its water, and stick to its stone, no process of natural 
selection will ever develop it into a monkey : it will go 
to the limbo of nonentity.* But what an alarming thought, 
that at a period separated from us by such vast geologic 
ages, that, according to the nebular hiypothesis, held by so 
many of our leading astronmeors as a probable theory, 
this whole universe was a mass of heated vapour ; 
what an alarming thought that the very existence of man 
should have depended upon a jelly bag sticking to a stone 
and sucking up water ! Alas ! there was then no water, 
no stones, no jelly bags, and therefore there are now no 
men ! Man escapes, poor thing, from his humble 
parentage : he need not feel his ears to find the proof 
there of his monkeyhood :f but his escape costs him dear. 
What with astronomy and biology, men of science be- 
tween them have cleared us out of existence. Scientifi- 
cally, man is no more. 

My argument, fortunately, depends upon matters of 
fact: facts for Y\rhich the believer accounts by holding 

* It is a curious fact that these Ascidians possess a heart and a 
circulation, but that after the heart has beaten a certain number of 
times it stops, and then beats the opposite way, so as to reverse the 
circulation. (Lay Sermons, p. 95.) In what stage of its progress 
did it so degenerate as to lose this remarkable power ? 

t Darwin, "Descent of Man," i. 22.' 

150 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



that this world is the work of a Being possessed of in- 
finite wisdom and power, and who therefore has endowed 
all His creatures with those faculties which they needed, and 
with no others ; because to give useless faculties would be 
a violation of God's attribute of wisdom. The student of 
natural science may take another view. It is no part of 
his business to do so. His office is to discover and tabulate 
the order of facts, of phenomena, and this order he calls 
a natural law. Well and good. But teleology, the science 
of ends, which gives the reason why a thing is what it is 
— teleology belongs to the metaphysician. It is his 
business to inquire into causes and effects. Still, as a 
matter of fact, scientific men do try their hand at account- 
ing for the present state of things, and they say, perhaps, 

10 

that there is a struggle, a competition in nature, so sharp 
and close that no creature can continue to exist save by 
the vigorous exercise of all its necessary faculties, while 
all useless qualities will be cast away as mere overweight 
and incumbrance. I need no decision upon this point ; 
the fact is all I want. , I do not want you to decide 
whether mindpreceded matter, and consequently that there 
is a God : or whether matter and mind came into existence 
contemporaneously, in which case there is no room for 
the theory of development, but abundant room for im- 
possibilities, metaphysical and actual ; or, lastly, whether 

151 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



matter preceded mind, the latter being- simply the lesult 
of a high corporeal organisation, slowly attained to by the 
processes of selection, natural and sexual. Whether this 
present state of things was worked out intelligently, by a 
Being possessed of will and understanding, or is the re- 
sult of blind and unintelligent powers, working fortuitously, 
this, to my argument, matters not. All I want is the ad- 
mitted fact — that every living organisation fully possesses 
all those faculties which it needs, and must use all its 
faculties under penalty, first of degradation, and, finally, 
in the long run, of extinction. 

But man is a living organization, and must, therefore, 
come under this law. Let us see whether the fact con- 
firms this deduction. Now, in all the long line, from the 
ascidian upwards to man, nature had supplied none but 
physical wants. Her children need food ; she gives them 
each those senses and that conformation which enables them 
to get each their own food. They need safety : she uses 
much ingenuity in providing for their safety. She is, 
moreover, liberal. Their food is, in general, gained so 
easily, and their safety so well provided for, that their lives 
are full of enjoyment. Her care, however, is taken 
in the main for the species, and not for the individual. 
He enjoys his food because nature has taken loving care 
for the whole family to which he belongs ; and she further 



152 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



takes care that that family shall continue to exist. If it 
perish, it is because by some change in temperature, or 
the like, the correspondence is destroyed between its 
faculties and its external position. Short of this, the in- 
genuity employed by nature in providing for the con- 
tinued existence of every species of insect and animal is 
as wonderful as that employed by her in continuing vege- 
table life; and, as a rule, the lower the creature is in the 
scale of being, the more curious the contrivances used 
for its preservation. 

Well, when we come to man we find these three leading 
necessities equally well provided for. Man is provided with 
the means for obtaining food, for providing for his safety, 
and for propagating his species. But, though nature's 
ends are the same, and reached with equal certainty, her 
means are, in the main, different. The animals are moved 
to gain their existence by their senses working upon their 
instincts. This is a great advance upon vegetable life. 
You had there neither senses nor instincts, but simply 
powers. But man rises above the animals as much as 
they transcend vegetables. He attains to these same 
ends of food, safety, and continued existence by the use 
of his reason. 

Now, I wish you to notice this. Nature is not limited 
in her resources, nor confined to one methods She is not 

153 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



obliged to plant animals in the ground that they may 
suck up food through their legs ; she can and does give 
them instincts by which they can get their food in a very 
different way. But perfect as these instincts are, nature 
can do still better. She can produce an animal capable 
of reasoning upon causes and effects, and who, therefore, 
provides for everything which he imagines to be good for 
him by setting those causes in motion which produce the 
desired effect.* 

But with the possession of reason there also goes the 
possession of what we call mental faculties. Not only 
can man by the use of his reason obtain food, provide 
for his safety, and continue his race, but higher ends are 
made possible for him, to be attained to by the use of 
this higher endowment. Man has the power of articulate 
speech, and upon this follows the power of learning to 
read, to v/rite, and to cypher; and upon the power of 
doing these three things follows a plenitude of other 
powers. Now, I shall not stop to enquire how man 
gained these powers, whether by natural and sexual 
selection or not; but I venture to point out that there is 



* There is something of this in animals just as, on the other hand, 
man is not altogether devoid of instincts. I should have expected this 
from the teaching of the first chapter of Genesis, which represents men 
not as a diKicct creation but as the last act of creatioji. 

154 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



a vast chasm between physical and intellectual powers. 
The most sensible monkey is a parody rather than an 
imitation of man, and the difference between the two is 
enormous.* The points of agreement serve rather to 
enable us to measure this interval, and see how wide it is, 
than to bridge it over. Now, let us suppose ourselves 
philosophers come, we will say, from the planet Jupiter, on 
a mission intrusted to us by the Jovians, to examine and 
report upon the nature of the creatures which people the 
four inferior planets. Terra, Venus, Mercury, and Mars. Of 
course, we should look upon the inhabitants of such small 
communities with contempt, but, being philosophers, we 
should not neglect anything because it was trifling. Well, 
when we came to Terra we should report that it was a 
very curious region, inhabited by a long scale of beings, 
each one fitted to its place, and that at their head there 
was a rather noxious, troublesome, and uppish creature 

* Physically the monkey is man's superior. Anatomists assure us 
that they can find no very great difference between his brain and ours. 
His larynx also is as well fitted as ours to produce articulate sounds. 
So far we are equal. But he has four hands, and we have but two. 
Read Sir C. Bell's " Bridgewater Treatise upon the Hand," and you will 
see at once that a vast superiority is implied in this. I can never be- 
lieve that when, by natural and sexual selection, a creature had been 
attained possessed of four hands, nature could so degradate in her 
work as to fall back upon two. No well-bred monkey would have 
mated with one so deformed." 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



called man, whose examination had caused us an infinity 
of trouble. 

In examining this creature we should find that it shared 
in all the wants of those beneath him, but that it supplied 
its wants, not by the use of instincts, but of reason. Over 
and above, however, man's physical wants, we should find 
that he had mental wants ; and with these wants faculties 
also, by which he could supply them. Supply all the phy- 
sical wants of an animal, and having none besides, it will 
lie still for hours or days until hunger stirs it to renewed 
exertion. Supply all man's physical wants, and his men- 
tal wants then develop into full activity. Give him the 
lowest and basest drudgery ; make him work morning, 
noon, and night in the meanest occupations, for the 
supply of merely physical necessities, and, though you can 
infinitely degrade, you cannot destroy his mental powers. 
He still thinks, still connects causes and eff"ects. But our 
purpose will be best answered by taking the case of those 
whose faculties are most highly cultivated. Has nature 
supplied a proper field for the exercise of the mental 
powers, not merely of Fuegians, but of the most highly 
developed man } You know that she has. Take the 
senses which he has in common with the animals, but see 
what vast means have been provided by which he can 

make an intellectual use of them. What arts and sciences, 

156 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



painting, music, harmony, numbers, eloquence, have 
grown out of their use. As for our mental powers, think 
only of the vast number ofologies which are claiming ad- 
mission into our very normal schools. Think only of all 
our learned Associations, our Royal Societies, our Social 
Congresses, our British Museums full of books, which have 
been written, and are waiting only to be read, and you 
must own that men do use their mental powers, and have 
means enough for a more ample use of them. Nature 
makes us use our mental powers to some extent. She 
encourages us to use them thoroughly and earnestly. 

Use them we niust. Man is placed is such a position 
that he must study what passes round him. Man learns 
by experience. Instincts are but slightly progressive. 
Unless brought into contact with man, the animals learn 
little — perhaps nothing. I do not doubt but that those 
huge monsters, whose remains we behold in geological 
museums, were the most dull and stupid creatures possible. 
I think this simply because I suppose that man did not then 
exist, and, therefore, that these monsters had nothing to 
waken them up out of their]sluggish torpor. But scientific 
men* tell me that existing mammals actually have larger 
brains than their ancient tertiary prototypes of the same 

* Lartet, quoted by Darwin, "Descent," i. 51. 
157 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



order. Let man enter the stage, and the instincts of 
animals are quickened. Nature did not create man with- 
out taking care to guard the inferior animals from his des- 
tructive powers. But man in him. self, essentially, is 
at once progressive and retrogressive. Bound up with 
him is an infinite possibility of advance and decay. He 
is never stationary. Both individuals and communities are 
perpetually either ascending or descending in the scale, 
morally and intellectually. But this law of nature obliges 
man to perpetual mental effort under the usual penalty of 
degradation. We have not merely to advance, to win new 
ground. If this were all, at length we should have nothing 
to do. We have to win back lost ground. Our gains are, 
I hope, greater than our losses ; but the progress of no 
community will ever be fast enough, continued enough, 
and assured enough, to justify the members of it in living 
in a fool's paradise. This, then, was our second point. 
The first was, that nature has provided us with a proper 
field for the exercise of our mental faculties ; the second, 
that slie imposes upon us the necessity of using them. 

We may add, that the law of scientific progress also 
makes it certain that no advance of science will ever 
deliver us from the necessity of using our faculties. The 
valuable part of every science is its theory — the mental 
part. Facts and fossils are of no value, except as being 



158 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



the materials for thought. No geologist would care much 
for a discovery of fossils in agreement with an established 
theory, but if the theory were still debated, then every 
discovery that tended to prove or disprove it, would be 
canvassed with intelligent interest. The pure sciences 
can grow, I am well aware, only by additions. But then 
they are simply instrumental. They are to the mixed 
sciences what arithmetic is to the ordinary business of life. 
Logarithms, algebra, the integral and differential calcu- 
luses, are simply easy ways of doing difiScult sums. It is 
a great thing, no doubt, for science to perfect its instru- 
ments and processes, but scientific progress lies in the 
mixed sciences themselves, and these are constantly under- 
going modification. The spectrum analysis is largely 
modifying the science of astronomy. Deep sea dredging, 
and other fresh means of information, have so modified 
geology, that no one holds now that similar strata are neces- 
sarily of the same date. A vast cretaceous formation is 
probably going on at this very day in the bed of the At- 
lantic. (Huxley/'Lay Sermons," p. 206.) The law, then, of 
scientific progress is constant modification; fresh facts 
are discovered, new theories started, old theories revived, 
existing theories altered, recast, newly shaped. Should a 
science become, practically, complete and perfect, scientific 
men would care for it no longer. The manufacturer and 

159 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION 



merchant ^^■ould then seize upon it. In this way what was 
once a problem in the mind of the student, becomes an 
article of use, comfort, and enjoyment in our daily lives. 
Meanwhile, new sciences spring up, and old sciences 
take new shape, and, as a matter of fact, so large has 
become the scientific domain, that no one man can master 
it. Division of labour has become as necessary here as in 
the manual crafts. We are no longer encyclopaedists, 
but each one must stick to his own page in the great 
book of learning. 

Many of these sciences relate to our social condition. 
And of these the importance and value every day rapidly 
increases. Good government largely depends upon know- 
ledge of all those natural laws upon which moral and 
physical well-being depends. Upon good government 
follow increased wealth, active trade, higher wages, and 
larger consumption of commodities. Upon these follows 
increased population, and that population concentrated upon 
spots favourable for all this activity. And upon this follow 
new social difficulties ; fresh problems arise to be solved, and 
new questions to occupy the mind both of the student and 
of tlie statesman. Unless solved, society will retrograde ; it 
will suffer in health, in wealth, and morality ; turbulence will 
take the place of quiet industry ; and that community will 

decay. Here again nature provides a field for the employ- 

i6o 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



ment of our faculties, and compels us to use them. If not 
there is the same penalty, degradation. I do not know how 
many geological periods it would take before, by the neglect 
of our powers, we could retrograde back to our ascidian 
progenitor ; but I see everywhere around me the proofs 
that retrogression is as much a law of man's nature as pro- 
gress. We can only continue what we are by using all our 
powers.'* 

But I may have lingered over this part of my subject too 
long. No one perhaps will deny that man both can and 
must use his mental powers as thoroughly as an animal must 
use its instincts, and a plant its vegetative powers, or it will 
suffer for its neglect. Only remember that my argument has 
nothing to do with individuals ; I am treating of man as a 
species, and investigating the general laws which regulate his 
well being. Well, now, has man any other powers than 



* The body politic is in fact very much like the natural body. There 
is a constant waste and a constant repair. The waste may be greater 
than the repair — and in that case the body dwindles — but the repair 
may be greater than the waste, in which case there is growth, progress. 
In both alike real growth can only be by assimilation. The new must 
be taken up into the old, and become part with it. That which is 
losing vitality must be put away ; but that which is to take its place 
must become one with the old. After a certain time, however, natural 
bodies lose their powers of assimilation, and old age and death are the 
result : I cannot enter into the question how far this is also the case 
with political bodies. ^^ 

i6i II 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



those already described ? Has he merely physical powers to 
enable him to get food, and other bodily necessaries \ and 
mental powers to enable him to read, write, and cypher ? 
Is this all ? You know that it is not all. There is another 
broad distinction between man and all the other inhabitants 
of this earth. He alone distinguishes between right and 
wrong.* 

Now if man possesses this faculty, however acquired, and 
by whatever name called, then if nature's laws are uni- 
versal, he is both bound to use it, will sufifer from not using 
it, and will have a proper field provided for its use. Nature 
gives no faculty without imposing an obligation of exercising 
it : an obligation, however, which rests in its full force upon 
the species, and upon the individual only as belonging 
to the species. Some powers every individual must use or 
he would die ; there are other powers which, if he does not 
use, nature will be content with a lighter penalty. Far be it 
from me to affirm that every one here uses his reasoning 
powers. I hope he does ; but if he does not use them, I am 
quite sure that nature will exact of him the penalty of stupid- 
ity. But the species must use them; if not, upon degradation 

* Animals brought into contact with, man attain some small share in 
this power. The infinence of man over domesticated animals is most 
remarkable. I should doubt whether a wild animal was at all capable of 
making such a distinction. 

162 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



would soon follow extinction. Nature, for instance, would 
not let man exist as a mere animal. If lie did not use his 
reason, the instincts of other animals are so superior to his, 
that while they found food he would be unable to do so. 
Even if necessity quickened his instincts, he would yet have 
ceased to be a man, and would be retrograding back to the 
ascidian. To continue to be a man he must make some low 
use at all events of his mental powers. Now, can you 
establish any such difference between man's intellectual and 
moral powers, as will justify you, while acknowledging that 
you must use the one, in neglecting the other ? Can you 
give any reason why you need not use the faculty which un- 
doubtedly you possess of distinguishing between right and 
wrong, and the faculty, let us say, of " using the imagination 
in matters of science." I am sure you cannot. By not using 
your mental powers you will be in an inferior mental 
position ; by not using your moral powers you will hold an 
inferior moral position. 

But you may say the penalty is slight, and we will pay it. 
We will use our physical powers, and become grand animals 
and we will use our mental powers, and become grand in- 
tellectual men. Not men I answer. Add intellectuality to 
animality, and you merely get an intellectual animal. Your 
moral powers are an essential part of yourselves. Con- 
fessedly too, there is ample field for using them. The whole 



163 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



world is so constituted that morning, noon, and night, the 
question perpetually arises of right and \vrong. You cannot 
take a step in life without conscience intervening. It is so 
inseparably a part of yourselves that constantly it acts as a 
mere instinct, and approves or condemns your conduct as 
spontaneously as your palate distinguishes between sweet 
and bitter. You may render your palate dull, so that you 
cannot taste what you eat and drink j you may render your 
conscience dull, but it has a strong recuperative force, and, 
after years of dullness, will awaken, and exercise again its 
judicial functions with stern and decisive energy. Struggle 
as much as you like, but the conclusion cannot be evaded, 
that you can distinguish between right and wrong, that you 
ought to do so, and that you must do so. 

If so, what follows ? I answer, the necessity of religion, 
and therefore of revelation. Resist as men will and do, 
they have but a choice between two alternatives. Either 
all this present state of things, in which every faculty has 
its appropriate field of exercise, and every external possi- 
bility has opposite to it an internal faculty ; either all this is 
an illusion and deceit, a purposeless and objectless piece 
of jugglery;* or if it be a reality, then the existence in man 

I have taken these words from the "Vedanta Philosophy." It teaches 
that the apparent reality of this world is mdyd, i.e., deceit, illusion, 

164 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



of faculties, obliging him to distinguish between right and 
wrong, constitute hini a responsible agent. If he is respon- 
sible, he is responsible to some one : and certain penalties 
are necessarily attached to the neglect, the misuse, and the 
violation of his moral powers. The person to whom man 
is responsible must be capable of forming an equitable 
judgment, and therefore must know the motives as well as 
the outward acts, and for this nothing less than omniscience 
will suffice. He must have the power of apportioning 
adequate rewards and punishments to human actions, which 
will need little less than omnipotence. And as no adequate 
reward or punishment follows in this life, there must be 
some other state in which men will be dealt with according 
to their true deserts. If not, then there exists in man a 
whole class of faculties, moral faculties, which seem to find 
in this present state of things an appropriate field for their 
exercise, but which man is under no necessity of using. A 
man who lives in the habitual violation of every moral 
obligation, but does so with discretion, may have a very 
large enjoyment of the things of this world : while generally 
a man whose conscience is tender, and whose life is regu- 

jugglery : " "naught besides the One exists : " the world was made out 
of nothing and is nothing. " All that is real in this visible, is the God 
who is invisible." See Ballantyne's "Christianity compared with 
Hindu Philosophy," pp. xxxi — xxxvii, 43 — 50* 

165 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



lated by the highest motives, necessarily and Toluntarily 

abandons much, both of pleasure and prosperity. Nature 

cannot have so bungled her work. The highest 

possible exercise of the powers which she has given 

us must necessarily lead to the highest possible good. 

It does not matter to the argument whether conscience and 

your other moral faculties be natural or acquired. If nature 

endowed an ascidian with the power of acquiring moral 

faculties, it was bound to use them as soon as it had got them. 

The question whether you are bound to use your mental 

faculties does not depend in the least upon the question 

whether man is an improved monkey. You are bound to 

use them simply because you have them. So you are bound 

to live as a responsible being simply because you have the 

faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong. You 

know, too, that you act yourselves upon this principle. If 

any one were to push one of you out of your seat 

and take it himself, not only would you be angry, but 

our chairman would call in a policeman to expel the 

disturber, and give you your seat back again. Why ? 

Because the man would have been doing wrong, and 

need not have done it ; and because it was wrong you 

are angry and punish him. But can you stop there ? 

There are things which we know to be wrong, but which 

hurt none but ourselves ; things we know to be wrong, but 

1 66 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



which benefit society. A man may liberally support useful 
institutions from motives of ostentation, or as a bribe, if he is 
a candidate, let us say, for a seat in parliament. An act may 
be apparently right, but the inner motive wrong. Now, 
conscience judges of things absolutely ; it condemns or ap- 
proves of things, not as they seem, but as they really are : 
not by results, but by their intrinsic character. What is 
there which answers to this outside of man ? Must there 
not be a judge who also judges men absolutely? You can 
find no such judge but God. Either, then, nature is a sham, 
and her laws not universal, and this present state of things 
a delusion, or there is a universal judge, and a future state in 
which reward and punishment will be meted out in strict ac- 
cordance with the rightness and wrongness of human 
action. A being omniscient and almighty can alone judge 
actions absolutely in the same way as conscience judges us, 
both for our thoughts, words, and deeds. 

I have chiefly spoken of conscience, but the argument 
takes in all man's moral and spiritual powers.* No man 

* It is the examination of these moral and spiritual faculties which 
makes it so probable that man possesses something more than a highly- 
organised body and mental powers, which, though superior in degree, 
are stUl of the same kind as those possessed by the animals. And it 
should be remembered that the proof that man possesses a soul, and 
that the soul is immortal, is entirely independent of revelation. It is 

based upon the intelligent study of the facts of psychology. If, how- 

167 



SCIENCE AND RE VELA Ti ON. 



can doubt but that man has within him powers which ex- 
actly answer to rehgion outside of him. The power of faith 
is as much a faculty as that of sight ; and so also is that 
instinct, I had almost called it, which makes a man 
ever turn away in discontent from the present to struggle 
for the future. And what is more, man's moral and 
religious faculties develop with advancing civilization just 
as his mental faculties do. The mental questions which 
agitate our minds would be entirely void of interest to a 
savage ; the social difficulties which occupy the attention 
of our political economists and statesmen would be mere 
trash to a peasant : so, too, with religion. I do not see any 
reason why a race may not sink so low as to lose the very 
idea of a God ; but I am sure that such a race would hold 
the very lowest place in the scale of humanity. Whatever 
round in the ladder of human progress you like to 
examine, I will make bold to say that you will find the 
religious and moral state of mankind there holding a very 
close relation to the degree of mental culture and civilization 
to "which it has attained. 

Now, the only thing that acts powerfully upon man's 

ever, it is said that man does not really possess, but only seems to possess 
these faculties, I answer that then nature is a mere deceiver, and its 
works a sham : and that, consequently, all physical science would be 
the study of the illusive. 

i68 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



moral faculties is religion. I do not say that this ought or 
ought not to be so; all I assert is that it is so. Call, if you 
like, the great mass of your fellow men Philistines, and des- 
pise their low culture, but you will find nothing that acts 
powerfully upon these Philistines to give them culture, to 
raise, refine, and purify them, except religion. Conscience, 
too, holds a most direct and evident relation to religion. 
You will not find conscience amenable to reasoning. When 
virtue begins to reason, the proverb tells you it is lost. 
When conscience condemns, it is because the thing con- 
demned is a sin against God j when it approves, it is be- 
cause the thing done is absolutely right, and as God com- 
manded. Conscience never asks whether a thing is a sin 
against society \ it never troubles about consequences, knows 
nothing about political economy, or political morality either. 
It judges by a higher and absolute rule. By so doing it 
makes man a responsible agent absolutely, brings him into 
direct relation with God as the absolute judge, and renders 
necessary a more exact apportionment of rewards and 
punishments than exists at present. There must be some 
other state of existence in which man will be judged in the 
same way as now he judges himself, and in which the 
natural effects of this judgment will be fully carried out. 
But, if there is thus a future judgment, and a state 

in which happiness and misery will follow as the 

1 59 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



natural* results of our actions here, man will require a certain 
amount of knowledge concerning this judgment. By the 
possession of conscience and other religious faculties, man 
holds a definite relation towards God. Plainly the most 
tremendous results may follow from this relation, and man 
ought to have some sure knowledge of these results. Now 
it is conceivably possible that God might have given us this 
knowledge by means of the light of nature, as we call it. 
But He has not. Confessedly natural religion is neither 
clear enough nor certain enough to affect powerfully the 
masses. Man is not a quiet, orderly, neutral sort of being ; 
he bears about with him a nature fraught and fully charged 
with the most dangerous passions. Reason, with its pru- 
dential maxims, has never done much to restrain these 
passions. To take, then, the lowest possible ground. As 
nature has given us moral qualities, I suppose that moral 
excellence is a thing as necessarily to be attained to as 
physical and mental excellence. . But while nature has 
provided ample means for attaining to the two last, she will 
not, without a revelation, have provided sufficient means for 
the attainment of the first. By the aid of religion, about 



* Though we draw a distinction between the natural and the super- 
natural, this distinction is tenable only when we look at things from 
below, and not when we look at them from above. We call those pro- 
cesses natui-al of wliich we know or might know the secondary causes. 



170 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



as many men probably attain to moral excellence, as by other 
natural means attain to physical and mental excellence.* 
Without religion nature will have broken down. You would 
have universally a state of things like that in ancient Greece 
• — one Plato, surrounded by the mass leading the most grossly 
sensual life. 

Nature cannot develop any being higher than herself, 
nor endow it with wants which she cannot supply. If 
nature develops intellect, morality, religion, then that power 
which developed these faculties must also be intellectual, 
moral, religious. What, then, can this power in nature be 
but the working of God } Out of nothing comes nothing. 
The effect cannot be greater than the cause. The 
existence of man, with his mental, moral, and religious 
powers, forbids us to believe that that which caused man to 
exist can be less possessed of these powers than he is. 

* It is no argument against revelation that it does not make us all 
holy and devout. It is not the law of this present state of things that all 
men attain to the highest possible physical and mental excellence. All 
that vre can say is, that they ought to aim at nothing less. So neither 
do all men attain to moral and religious excellence. Equally it ought to 
be their aim ; but why they so often fail in attaining to it is more than 
any one can answer. The failure of individuals to attain to tt e highest 
good possible for the species is one of nature's universal laws. "Why 
this present state of things is so constituted is a mysteiy, which cannot 
be solved here; but which will certainly be solved when we have the 
perfect knowledge promised us in i Cor. xiii. 12. 

171 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



Infinitely higher he may be, lower he cannot be. And as 
surely as man's physical and mental wants are provided 
for by that power which called these wants into being, so 
surely will man's moral and religious wants be supplied. 

They are not supplied by the light of nature ; nothing 
then remains but revelation. Into the formal proof of re- 
velation I must not enter 3 all that devolved upon me was 
to show the h priori probability, or at least possibility, of a 
revelation. I have endeavoured to show this by a conside- 
ration of what man is, viewed simply as a natural being, and 
by the consideration of his natural wants. I have not taken 
into consideration any of the additional knowledge given us 
in the Bible concerning man. I have treated him in much 
the same way as I might one of the creatures in the Zoolo- 
gical Gardens, if I had been asked to study it in order that 
I might see what its wants were, and tell the keeper what 
to give it to maintain it in the full possession of its powers. 
No doubt it would have helped me if I had been told what 
and where the creature had been before. I should then 
have had no difficulty in explaining and accounting for 
everything. Such knowledge, however, even revelation 
does not give us, because it is not indispensable. It gives 
us that only which is necessary for the supply of our wants. 

Even with this knowledge my argument is not concerned ; 

but certain general principles about revelation follow from 

172 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



what I have laid down. And first, revelation has nothing 
to do with our physical state. Reason is quite sufficient to 
teach us all those sanitary laws by which our bodies will be 
maintained in healthful vigour. If the Bible condemns 
drunkenness, gluttony, and the like, it does so not for sani- 
tary reasons, but for moral reasons, because they are sins. 
So revelation has nothing to do with our mental powers ; 
whatever we can attain to by our mental powers we are to 
attain to by them. Physical and metaphysical science 
alike lie remote from the object-matter of revelation. Be- 
cause God has, in the Bible, given us revelation in an in- 
formal way, in order^ perhaps, to commend it to our entire 
nature, people often forget that its proper object-matter is 
sim^ply the moral relation in which man stands to God, 
especially with reference to a future state of being. Religious 
men forget this. They often take up an antagonistic posi- 
tion to science, and try to make out systems of geo^ 
logy and astronomy and anthropology from the Bible^ 
and by these judge all that scientific men say. Really the 
Bible never gives us any scientific knowledge in a scien- 
tific way. If it did, it would be leaving its own pro- 
per domain. When it does seem to give us any such know- 
ledge, as in the first chapter of Genesis, there is a very im- 
portant differentia about it. What it says has always refe- 
rence to man. The first chapter of Genesis does not tell 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



US how the earth was formed absolutely ; geology ought 
to tell us that. It tells us how it was prepared and fitted 
for man. Look at the work of the fourth day. Does any 
man suppose that the stars were set in the expanse of 
heaven absolutely that men might know what time of year it 
was ? But that is their special service, and in old time a 
most important service for man. To the geologist man is just 
as much and just as little as a trilobite or a megatherium. 
To the student of the Bible man is everything, and the first 
chapter of Genesis teaches him that man was the cause of 
all other terrestrial creation, the sum and cro'WTQ of the 
Creator's work.^^ 

But if believers mix up science and revelation, so do the 
students of physical science. No sooner is a theory started, 
than it is immediately compared mth what the Bible says, 
or is supposed to say. Now, no doubt, the comparison 
between the teachings of revelation and science is inevitable. 
"Whatever is mixed up with revelation, omng to the manner 
in which God has been pleased to bestow it, must, at least, 
be true. It would be impossible for us to accept the 
authority of the Bible upon those points in which we cannot 
judge of its tmth, if in those points in which we are compe- 
tent judges we found it erroneous. The teachings, there- 
fore, of science and of revelation must be compared j but 
in this comparison not only must we remember that it is not 

174 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



the object of the Bible to teach science, and that, as it 
speaks to all people at all times, it must use popular lan- 
guage, but also that the comparison must be made, not with 
the floating theories of the hour, but only with established 
truths. If the wisest geologist of our days could show that 
there was an exact agreement between geology and the 
Bible, it would rather disprove than prove its truth. For, as 
geology is a growing science, it would prove the agreement 
of the Bible with that which is receiving daily additions, and 
is constantly undergoing modification, and ten years hence 
the two would be at hopeless variance. At the same time 
there is a good side to the discussion, and the theologian 
especially is the gainer. In the present day the attack upon 
revelation draws its weapons from our increased knowledge 
of physical science, of philology, and of history, and 
the theologian can no longer neglect these studies. 
I have no scruple in saying that I look with 
pride upon what my countrymen have done, and 
are doing, in enlarging the bounds of our scientific know- 
ledge, even if I do not always approve of their spirit, or 
accept their conclusions ; and I am quite sure theologians 
must study, intelligently and dispassionately, all those 
branches of knowledge which are brought into contact with 
revelation, or they will lose their influence over the intel- 
lect of the country. It is no use treating physical science 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



as a bugbear. Let our theologians master it, and they will 

find it a manly study, which will give their minds breadth, 

will teach them what are the difficulties which press heavily 

on many thoughtful minds, and which must be fairly met. 

An opposition between an old science like theology and 

new sciences there must be : but let both sides remember 

that revelation was never intended to teach us anything 

that we could learn by the use of our natural faculties, and 

that what the Bible teaches must be compared not with 

floating and probable theories, but with proved theories. 

These proved theories will, I believe, fall into their place 

in due course of time, as easily as Galileo's theory about the 

revolution of the earth round the sun. If not, I do not see 

how the claims of the Bible to be the Word of God can be 

maintained : for I cannot believe that there is any chasm 

between the teachings of God in nature and in revelation. 

But I think it perfectly possible that men may misinterpret 

and misunderstand both one and the other. 

I have detained you too long. But I must make one 

more remark. If the proper object matter of revelation is 

that knowledge, which being necessary for us as moral 

agents, was yet unattainable by our natural powers, then 

reason is no judge of what revelation teaches. There may 

be in our relations to God, things which we never should 

have expected : deep truths opening onwards into mysteries 

176 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



past our present finite comprehension. If everything had 
been plain, easy, commonplace, revelation would not have 
been needed. Nevertheless, reason holds a very high office 
with respect to revelation. In a matter of so high conse- 
quence, as whether God has spoken to us or not, we are 
bound to examine most scrupulously the evidence upon 
which the fact of the revelation rests. And this examination 
involves an enquiry into the teachings of revelation. The 
existence of mysteries in a revelation is reasonable : the 
existence of immorality in it would be fatal to its claims. For 
if the scientific basis for my belief in the gift of a revelation is 
the existence in me of conscience, and of moral faculties which 
malce me a responsible being, I am left absolutely without a 
basis for a revelation which makes me violate my conscience. 
A revelation which degrades my moral and spiritual powers is 
as much against nature as anything that degraded my physi- 
cal or mental powers. If religion be true, it must ennoble, 
elevate, purify, and perfect me, here as far as the present 
condition of my existence permits, entirely in that other 
state to which our present responsibility points, provided, 
of course, that I submit myself to its teachings. I know of no 
way by which I can make this examination except by reason 
and experience. And I hold this further, because I hold 
that a true religion must be commensurate with the whole 

of man. It must make him better physically, mentally, 

177 12 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 



morally, and spiritually, and consecrate all his powers to 
God. 

I am only too well aware that much which I have said has 
been put in a feeble and confused manner. Much also 
necessary for the support and elucidation of the argument had 
to be omitted because of the necessity of compressing it into 
so short an essay ; but I trust that the main line of thought 
is clear, namely, that religion outside of us stands in so plain 
a relation to what we are internally, that either it is real, or 
this whole state of things is a delusion. Man, without a 
revelation, and therefore without religion, is the only one 
thing of all that exist upon the face of the earth that is a 
bungle,* a failure, and a mistake. 



* Professor Huxley considers that man is a bungle. At all events he 
would be glad to be "turned into a sort of clock, and wound up every 
morning before he got out of bed," on condition that he should always 
"think what is true, and do what is right." (Lay Sermons, p. 373.) I 
suppose this means that we should like to be governed by very perfect 
instincts, but I question whether he would not find his new kind of life 
dull. At present both right thinking and right doing require of him 
an effort, which, from the spirit of his writings, I should think he en- 
joys. But, after all, what he says has a true foundation. Sin is not a 
necessary part of man's lot. It cleaves to him because he is fallen ; and 
this world apparently offers us a state of moral and religious discipline, 
by the aid of which, in a future state, we shall be free from sin. But 
those who do not wish to retrograde would prefer to have this freedom 
by the force of perfected habits than by the force of instinct. 



178 



THE 

NATURE AND. VALUE 

OF THE 

MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO 
CHRISTIANITY. 

BY 

JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D., 

KENSINGTON. 



MIRACLES. 



One of the most touching narratives in the New Testament 

relates to a want of faith in miracles. It is said that when 

Thomas was told of his Master's resurrection, he replied, 

" Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, 
and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my 

hand into His side, I will not believe." He was not de- 
nounced for this. No word of withering scorn, or cutting 
ridicule, or threatening anger, fell on the ear of the doubting 
disciple. But evidence was offered. " Reach hither thy finger, 
and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and 
thrust it into my side ; and be not faithless, but believing." 
As far as rebuke appeared, it was only by implication, in 
words respecting those whose faith is of keener eye, and 
swifter foot : " Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet 
have believed." 

I think that every one who speaks of miracles to doubting 
minds should from this narrative take a lesson. Surely, the 

i8i 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



gist and purpose of it is, that we should distinguish between 
intellectual difficulty and moral prejudice, and deal patiently 
and convincingly with honest seekers after truth. Some- 
times the subject before us has been so handled as to drive 
the unbeliever into deeper unbelieving — I would rather strive 
to work upon a little faith, and make it more. 

I. 

I am to speak to you respecting the nature of the mira- 
culous testimony to Christianity. My business is v/ith mighty 
works, recorded in the N^w Testament as having been 
wrought for the :purpose of testifying to a Divine mission. 
No definition of their character in relation to physical law 
can anywhere be found in this ancient record. They are 
not spoken of as violations of law, or as suspensions of law, or 
as interferences with law, or as coiitradictions to law. They 
are described, not on the side of their physical nature, but 
on the side of their moral signification. They are depicted, 
not in their connection with the obvious order of the ma- 
terial universe, or with any hidden powers and principles 
of a higher and harmonious description ; but in their con- 
nection with Him who claimed to be the Redeemer of 
mankind, who came, according to His own words, to seek 
and save that which was lost. They are denominated " won- 

dersy^ startling occurrences, things contrary to common 

182 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

experience; and ^'- signs ^' — not mere marvels bursting idly 
on the public gaze, and exciting in a multitude of spectators a 
barren curiosity, but signs ^ — replete with an ulterior meaning, 
and testifying to the character and work of Him through 
whom they were accomplished. 

There is no necessity, then, for us at the outset to define 
a miracle on the physical side of it — to call it a violation of 
law, or a suspension of law — an interference with it, or a con- 
tradiction to it. In other words, there is no need imposed 
by the conditions of our argument, to inquire into the mode 
in which such a phenomenon can be produced. It is 
enough to show that it did occur, and to dwell upon the 
religious significancy of its occurrence first to the witnesses, 
and next to ourselves. What is the exact position which 
miracles may be thought to occupy as wonders in the uni- 
verse, whether, through breaking in upon common experience, 
they are referable to the operation of occult laws, known and 
controlled at a fitting moment by the mysterious touch of the 
wonder-worker; or whether they are to be considered as 
resulting simply from the immediate fiat of the Supreme will, 
are questions which may with advantage be relegated for 
consideration elsewhere. 

I. But, at the very threshold of our inquiry we are met 
by the assertion, that a miracle, however defined, is in itself 
simply impossible. Impossible ! In what sense impossible ? 

183 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



Does it mean impossible to man, or impossible to God? 
Impossible to man, of course, it is. That impossibility enters 
into the popular idea of a miracle. IMan has no such control 
over nature as to be able to produce one. But if it be said 
a miracle is impossible to God, such an impossibility 
involves the extension of human inability to God Himself. 
It involves either the idea, that nature has ever been inde- 
pendent of God, or the idea, that if produced by Him, He 
is no longer Lord of His own works — this Lordship having 
been surrendered by His will, or having escaped from His 
hands. Summarilydisposingof this gross anthropomorphism, 
we find behind it the dogma of Spinoza, that there is nothing 
transcendental anywhere, no transcendental beginnings, no 
transcendental interpositions ; for God and nature are one 
through the eternities. In the wake of Spinoza's philosophy 
follows the modem axiomi — " to recognise the impossibility 
even of any two material atoms subsisting together without 
a determinate relation — of any action of the one on the other, 
whether of equilibrium or of motion, without reference to a 
physical cause — of any modification whatsoever in the 
existing conditions of material agents, unless through the in- 
variable operation of a series of eternally impressed coiiseqiietices^ 
following in some necessary chain of orderly cofinexion.'^* 

* "Essays and Reviews" (Baden Powell), p. 133. The italics are 
mine, simply to call attention to the point of the quotation. 

184 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

Here, in limine^ before examining this principle, let me 
observe, once for all, that miracles do by no means cast any 
slur upon the settled order of nature, as if it were faulty and 
imperfect, and required correction or supplement for effect- 
uating its proper ends — as frail constructions in engineering 
departments of human contrivance need subsequent repairs. 
Nature is perfect enough for her own ends; miracles are 
introduced for other and higher purposes. This requires to 
be borne in mind throughout our entire discussion. 

But to come to the antagonist principle, that there is 
a development in nature through the agency of physical 
laws, apart from an original Creator and an everlasting 
Lord. I do not say — far from it — that the principle de- 
nies the existence of such a Creator and Lord, but it 
supposes at least that the physical order of the universe is 
fixed in such a sense, as to have ever excluded from it the 
action, directly or indirectly, of a Divine will, beyond the 
inflexible maintenance of ordinary operations. It is said, 
" The enlarged critical and inductive study of the natural 
world cannot but tend powerfully to evince the incon- 
ceivableness of imagined interruptions of natural order, or 
supposed suspensions of the laws of matter, and of that 
vast series of dependent causation which constitutes the 
legitimate field for the investigation of science, whose 
constancy is the sole warrant for its generalization." In 

185 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



reply to this it may be fairly urged that science, whilst she 
maintains the invariable sequence of causes and effects, and 
the uninterrupted order of physical events, is a prophetess 
of truth and wisdom. She enunciates lessons bound up 
with the welfare of the race. Thus far there is no an- 
tagonism between her and religion. She can, without 
abandonment of her principles, nay, in the act of carrying 
them out, officiate as a priestess at the altar of God ; nor 
is there anything in the position for which she stipulates 
contrary to the claims of Revelation. For Revelation, in 
appealing to miracles, supposes the ordinary course of 
physical phenomena to be inviolable, and no book more 
than the Bible exliibits the normal constancy of natural 
agencies. But when science pronounces as impossible all 
such signs and wonders as are recorded in Scripture, she 
steps out of her province. In her o\^ti province she may 
justly affirm there are no signs of miracles ; she may sweep 
her telescope over the fields of the sky, and ply her micro- 
scope amidst the growths of the earth, and say, I can see 
no traces anywhere but of inflexible law. These realms of 
existence are full of order. It is the perfection of their 
beauty, that they are free from violations, suspensions, 
disturbances, and interferences. But to say this — and I 
fully concur in it — is not to demonstrate that the Scrip- 
tures relate impossibilities. To do so, philosophy must 

i86 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

pass beyond the range of physical observation, since there 
no place can be found for working out the desired demon- 
stration. Philosophers do not always remember how 
difficult it is to prove a negative. Showing that certain 
things are, they are apt to slide into a belief that therefore 
certain other things cannot be, the conclusion proving on 
logical examination a simple noii seqintur. Doubtless it is a 
fact, that we can detect nowhere in nature a provision made 
for producing miracles such as come under our review in 
this lecture, that no prophecy nor hint of them can be 
discerned throughout her measured reahr^s ; but this is a 
very different thing from saying, that nature teaches the 
belief of them to be absurd. So far from its being absurd, 
there may, after all, be found in nature something analogous 
to a miracle. In nature there are distinct worlds, worlds 
between which there are gaps and gulfs. I do not dispute 
that there are striking approximations in the phenomena of 
some realms to the phenomena of others ; but there are also 
broad deep spaces, here and there, never bridged over by 
the discoveries of science. Hence, " an animal," as you 
have been told already, in the words of Hegel, " is a 
miracle for the vegetable world." It is a new creation in 
some way, and a new creation in any way is a miracle. 
After wandering amongst rocks, we find in plants a new 
world. Organized life is so ; so also, compared with 

187 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



animal instinct, is tlie mind of man, with its spiritual reason, 
and its moral consciousness. 

Not only do Coleridge, Kant, and Plato regard man's 
highest faculty as essentially different from the mere adaptive 
understanding of an animal nature j but what is still more 
remarkable, Aristotle himself, whose turn of mind was so 
different from theirs, differentiates man from other creatures 
on the ground of his being endowed with the faculty of 
reason. In his v/crk on the Generation of Animals, he says 
that there is no resource except to believe, that the reason 
has no affinity with the material elements out of which the 
human embryo is formed, but that it comes from without, 
and that it alone, of all the component parts of man, is 
divine."^* Thus, in the opinion of one of the greatest philo- 
sophers the world has ever known, the line of demarcation 
between man and all lower creatures is broad and clear, 
a line which in the simple order and development of nature 
they could never cross. The superior attributes of humanity, 
according to him, come from without; here, then, amongst 
the component parts of humanity is something divine. In 
other words, we have a new world ; a new creation. I do 
not say there is a strict parallel between any new race or 
species in nature and the occurrence of individual miracles 

* De Gen. An. II. iii. lo. See article by Sir Alexander Grant in 
the Contemporary, May, 187 1, p. 277. 

188 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 



on rare occasions, but I do say that there is enough of 
resemblance between these two descriptions of change to 
exempt a believer in both of them from the charge of being 
absurd. 

Furthermore, there are in human minds varieties of power 
of an astonishing description : although there be faculties 
common to all men, the vigour of those faculties in some 
cases is such as perfectly to eclipse the vigour of them in 
others. The superiority of individual minds, whose works 
have filled the world with wonder, is such as to leave 
behind, at an unapproachable distance, the ordinary mea- 
sure of human endowment. Certain intellects (I need not 
name them) have long exercised a formative power upon 
the civilized portions of our race. They have been as 
crystals inserted in a solution, and other crystals have 
received shape from them. Whence have come these 
typical energies in the intellectual world? No law of 
development will account for a resplendent genius now 
and then flashing on the world ; for the appearance of 
a master mind, after humanity has kept on a low level 
through generation after generation ; for the ascent again of 
gifted spirits into the highest heaven of invention, after 
another lapse into mere mediocrity. No known laws of 
causality account for such facts in the realms of intellectual 

existence. If, in the case of man, as compared with other 

189 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



animals, the difference, as Aristotle says, is something which 
comts from wUhoiit, the same may be said with respect to 
the difference between ordinary mortals and William Shake- 
spere or John Milton. There is forced upon us the con- 
viction, that these stars which dwell apart are kindled by fires 
burning in superhuman spheres. I do not say, in this case, 
any more than in the others I have cited, that we find an 
exact parallel to a miracle ; but I do maintain, that we dis- 
cover here a kind of inspiration which, Hke the miraculous, 
transcends all known laws,' and brings to mind what was 
said by the first of those just named : 

** There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 

What is called physical science must change her name, 
and renounce her office, and assume functions of another 
order, before she can pronounce a peremptory negative 
upon the point in controversy.^ Physical science needs to 

* Since writing the above, I have lighted on the following passage in 
an able university sermon by one of the lecturers in the present course. 
I am glad to confirm what had struck my own mind, by quoting the 
words of so careful a reasoner. In reference to philosophic doubts 
directed against the idea of design, and the analogy betAveen human and 
natural productions, he remarks : " This is evidently a very hard ques- 
tion, and if it properly belonged to the province of physical inquiry I 
should shrink from hazarding any investigation of its merits. But the 
question has overstepped the boundary of such sciences, and become a 
branch of philosophy. I may seem obscure in making this assertion, 
but yon 'wiJ ^ee its truth if you consider for a mcatnent the limit which 

390 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 



become metaphysical, and to pass into fields of abstract 
reasoning in order to the utterance of a universal dictum. 
To this kind of mental employment in itself I make no 
objection; for the science of merely physical nature, without 
any outlook into higher regions, keeps the soul in humi- 
liating imprisonment. The excursions of thought, however, 
now before us are regarded in some quarters under the 
singular delusion of being strictly scientific, whilst employed 
in devising a theory of the universe which excludes the 
constant control of a personal God, an Almighty will. 
The assaults on what is miraculous can be carried on 
only with metaphysical weapons. The facts of phy- 
sical nature do not supply them ; only from theories 
of physical nature, taking a metaphysical form, can 
they be gathered. Even Positivism, with all its doubt- 
fulness and denial — strange contradiction that — must, in 
order to deny the possibihty of miracles, build up a wall 

divides science from philosophy. Sciences are often content to accept 
their principles, the lower from the higher (as Aristotle puts the case) in 
an ascending scale up to metaphysic, which, if it is anything at all, is the 
philosophy of first grounds so far as they are discoverable. While the 
various kinds of inquiry assume their several grounds as postulates, each 
keeps its separate and subordinate place. But one prime impulse of 
the human mind is unification, and thus, in every science, there springs 
up a tendency to ground itself. The moment this attempt is made, a 
science becomes a philosophy, and must be tested by the ordinary 
criteria of philosophic procedure." — Right and Wrong, by the Rev. W. 
Jackson, M.A. 

191 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



to shut them out, by trenching first on ground beyond its 
own domain. Pure Positivism, consistently with itself, is not 
competent to contradict the existence of the supernatural ; 
it can but leave it an open question. The common 
method of distinctly denying miracles is one involving 
either some atheistic or pantheistic principle. Assume — 
and it is but an assumption — that matter is eternal and self- 
sufficient ; that natural laws have not originated in, or are 
not administered by, a personal will; and thus assuming 
what prepares for, if it does not necessitate, some atheistic 
or pantheistic hypothesis, you can plausibly maintain that 
the wonders of which we speak are utterly inconceivable. 
But, as you see, it is not physical science simply considered 
which brings out this result ; the result comes through add- 
ing to physical science what is really a metaphysical element. 
At what a tremendous cost, it may be observed by the 
way, is such a result achieved. The philosophy of universal 
necessity places man in the same predicament as it does 
simple matter. If all nature excludes voluntary control, 
and is subject only to an iron rule of invariable succession, 
then man also must himself be incapable of voluntary 
control, whether it comes from a supreme will or from his 
own. Thus the warfare which assails miracles, threatens to 
destroy all ideas of freedom and moral responsibility. And 
this dark foreshadowing is not concealed. " Step by step," we 

192 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

are confidently and calmly told, " the notion of evolution by 
law is transforming the whole field of om" knowledge and 
opinion. Not the physical world alone is now the domain 
of inductive (?) science, but the moral, the intellectual, and 
the spiritual are being added to the empire. It is the crown 
of philosophy to see the immutable even in the complex 
action of human life."* 

But when all assumptions are denied, the whole ques- 
tion presents another asj^ect. Given the fundamental dis- 
tinction between things physical and things moral ; given 
the higher nature of man, the personal existence of God, a 
moral element in the Divine rule, the immortality of the 
human soul, and the present vicinity of invisible spiritual 
realms; and, immediately, miracles wrought by the Divine 
will for men's moral welfare are completely removed out of 
the sphere of the impossible. 

Positivism, Atheism, and Pantheism are considered in 
other lectures of this course, and therefore it is not my office 
to examine them. To what has been said by the Arch- 
bishop of York and the Rev. Mr. Jackson, and to what may 
be said by the Rev. Dr. Rigg, I must refer my hearers. 

I would only observe in passing, what, indeed, I have 
hinted at already, that it puzzles me beyond description to 
conceive how, by any course of natural evolution, inde- 

* Westminste}' Revieiv, Oct., i860. Art. on New Christianity, 

^93 13 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



pendent of the introduction of a new force by an overruling 
power, the phenomena of the human will with its morally 
creative energy for good and evil could have been produced. 
To solve, on the principle of pure development, the problem 
of the genesis of that mysterious faculty, is an insuperable 
task. If we may speak of what is inconceivable — and scien- 
tific men set us the example — we should say the existence 
of volition in man, with its moral accompaniments, is 
utterly inconceivable, apart from belief in a Divine will, of 
which ours is the offspring. 

It appears, then, that science really presents no antece- 
dent grounds for rejecting miracles, and that if we believe 
in a personal God, the presumed impossibility melts away. 
This point has been conceded by one of the masters of 
modern reasoning. "A miracle," as was justly remarked 
by Brown, " is no contradiction to the law of cause and 
effect ; it is a new effect, supposed to be produced by the 
introduction of a new cause. Of the adequacy of that 
cause, if present, there can be no doubt, and the only 
antecedent improbability which can be ascribed to the 
miracle, is the improbability that any such cause existed."* 

2. When we have disposed of the preliminary objection 

which, in some way or other, says miracles are impossible, 

we are met by another objection, namely, that they are 

* Mill's "System of Logic," ii., i6o. 
194 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

immensely improbable, Hume's ingenious position, *— 
that miracles are contrary to human experience, that no 
amount of human testimony is sufficient to establish them, 
and that it is far more likely men should be deceived or 
mistaken, than that such events as miracles must be, could 
ever take place, — has been made to do abundant service in 
this controversy ; very little, if anything, has been added by 
those who have persistently used the argument, to improve 
its form or to increase its plausibiHty. One of its latest 
modifications is, that incidents out of the common course 
of things, said to happen in the present day, are by all of 
us sceptically regarded, that supernatural pretensions are 
felt by us to be inadmissible, and that where we are com- 
pelled to allow the honesty of witnesses, if they affirm any- 
thing involving a miraculous nature, we at once dispose of 
the whole matter by saying ' there must be a mistake some- 
where.' Undoubtedly it is true that miracles are contrary 
to common experience. They must be so, or they would 
not be what they are. If they were of frequent occurrence^ 

* "The argument in Hume's celebrated Essay on Miracles was very 
far from being a new one. It had, as Mr. Coleridge has pointed out, 
been distinctly indicated by South in his sermon on the incredulity of 
St. Thomas ; and there is a remarkable statement of much the same 
argument put into the mouth of Woolston's Advocate, in Sherlock's 
Trial of the Witnesses." — Art. on Miracles in Smith's "Dictionary of 
the Bible." 

195 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



if they had happened in the history of the world so often 
as to become famiHar to mankind, they would change their 
character completely. Their nature and purpose^ in the 
view of those who receive them, is such as to render it 
necessary that we should bear this in mind. But to allege 
that they are contrary to human experience, taken in the 
widest point of view, is to beg the question at issue, 
a fact remarked a thousand times. That they are not 
contrary to the experience of certain persons who lived 
eighteen hundred years ago, is what Christians affirm ; 
to say that they are, is illogically to cut the controversy 
short, and, by a general denial of everything of the kind, 
to put out of court the very case about to be tried, in sup- 
port of which there are credible witnesses waiting to give 
evidence. The question of probability must be looked at 
all round. The circumstances under which any alleged 
wonders may have happened must be taken into account, 
before we pronounce upon their probability or improba- 
bility. When extraordinary things, coloured with a super- 
natural tinge, are related to us as having occurred without 
any assignable purpose, or only for some sectarian or party 
end, in connection with beliefs long cherished and avowed, 
of course we look on them suspiciously j giving to the 
authorities relating the narratives, credit for integrity and 
truthfulness, we naturally say ' there must be a mistake 



196 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

somewhere.' And, no doubt, the general culture of the 
present age, however superficial that culture may be, makes 
us far less ready than our fatliers were, to endorse popular 
tales of wonder. There is a salutary scepticism which 
grows out of extensive knowledge. Truth is of such im- 
mense value, that we should not be indifferent to it in the 
smallest communications and concernments of life. Most 
assuredly any wayward, eccentric, unmeaning, and useless 
departure from the common course of things, tending only 
to shake our faith in nature, — as if men might gather grapes 
of thorns, or figs of thistles, as if barley being sown, wheat 
should spring up, or an apple tree by a sudden freak should 
bear oranges_, — would deserve to be stigmatized as unworthy 
of belief. But the wonders in question come under another 
category. They are represented in the history which has 
recorded them, not only as being exceptional incidents in 
themselves, but as having been accomplished under excep- 
tional circumstances. They are not waifs and strays on the 
stream of time, floating -no one knows why and whither ; 
but growths rooted in what appears as a unique system 
of moral instruction and improvement, designed by the 
loving Father of spirits for His lost children. They do not 
produce what may be called a disturbance of nature — that 
is, a throwing things in the physical world out of gear, so 

that men are thereby puzzled to make out what nature is, 

197 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



and how far it may be trusted. The documents which 
contain our miraculous chronicles attest the immutability 
of Him who is the King of nature, and the unchangeable 
foundation of His government and law, with a pre-eminent 
luminousness and with an unparalleled force. 

The wonders chronicled were avowedly wrought for pur- 
poses of the highest order; and here, again, we fall back 
upon the distinction between what is physical and what is 
moral. Those purposes of the highest order to which we 
refer are moral. They bear on the noblest destinies of 
humanity, and they link themselves with the principles of 
natural religion, with the being and sway of a mighty^ wise, 
and gracious God, with our conscience and responsibility, 
and with the future existence of the soul. Natural religion, 
though it speaks not a word of miracles, though it gives no 
prophecies of their advent, yet prepares for their appear- 
ance so far, that its teachings, fairly considered, cut off all 
antecedent unlikelihood of their occurrence. For natural 
religion suggests the desirableness of revealed religion, 
and revealed religion is only another name for supernatural 
interposition. 

In a lecture upon Science and Revelation, by the Dean 
of Canterbury, it has been shown that man's moral nature, 
man's religious susceptibilities, render religion a necessity 
for the supply of his deepest wants ; but that what is called 

198 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

natural religion is not clear enough, nor certain enough, to 
affect the generality of our race. Revelation, then, it may 
be fairly argued, looking at man, is a desideratum, looking 
at God, is a probability ; and Revelation, being obviously a 
supernatural bestowment, seems to imply some authentica- 
tion of itself, in part at least, by means of evidence corre- 
sponding with its own supernatural origin and character. 

The conditions under which Scripture miracles are said 
to have been performed must be kept in view when we are 
told they are improbable. They were not performed in one 
continued series by a succession of Thaumaturgists ; but 
they are found grouped together in certain clusters. As 
science indicates particular epochs of the energizing power 
of nature, so the Bible records particular epochs of an ener- 
gizing power above nature. 

The first great cluster of Bible wonders we find gathered 
round the Lawgiver of Israel ; the second round the great 
Reformer of God's ancient Church ; the third round Him 
who is spoken of as The Word made flesh, who dwelt 
among us, and who imparted to His apostles miraculous 
powers akin to His own. Miracles, for the most part, are 
halos of divine light encircling three grand names — Moses, 
Elijah, Jesus, — the last the greatest of the three. 

Physical wonders we meet with in company with spiritual 
ones — wonders in outward nature in company with wonders 

199 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



in the great soul-world, of which sensible things are the 
types and shadows. In other words, miracles occur in con- 
nection with inspiration, and, whilst marvels startle the eye, 
new truths ox new applications of truth are addressed to the 
mind. In harmony with facts in the intellectual universe 
already noticed, resembling the exceptional illuminations 
of genius which at intervals have flashed on the rest of 
mankind, — like the lightning that lighteneth out of the one 
part under heaven, and shineth unto the other part under 
heaven, — souls inspired with a grand moral message have 
come forth from the secret place of the Most High; and 
it has been in the pathway of these inspired souls that 
physical miracles have started up ; rather, it has been by 
their hands that physical miracles have been wrought. 

There have been surprising coincidences in modern times 
between the wonderful in nature and the wonderful in his- 
tory ; for example, between the sailing of the invincible 
Spanish Armada, and the storm which strewed the shores 
of Great Britain with its ponderous wrecks — between the 
march of Napoleon's army and the winter's snow which 
blinded, benumbed, and destroyed so many thousands. 
The connection is unexplained except on the principle of 
a Divine providence.* And so in ancient times there were 
coincidences between the lightning and thunder of Sinai, 

* See Martensen's "Christian Dogmatics, " 222, 
200 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

and the legislative wisdom of Moses — between the fire that 
fell on Carmel, and the reforming zeal of Elijah. The con- 
nection is explicable only on the principle of these men 
having been the internunciators of the Divine will. This 
explication is strengthened by what they did with their own 
fingers or their own lips. 

It may be considered as entrenching too much on the 
domain of doctrine to speak in this lecture of the Incarna- 
tion; but I would venture to say thus much, that Jesus 
appears on the face of the evangelical narratives, as the Son 
of God, in a sense in which no other being can be rightly 
called so ; that in the opinions of early Christendom, the 
lowest as well as the highest. He was esteemed as a super- 
natural Person ; * and that, by common consent, amidst 
diversities of theological sentiment, it is acknowledged, 
never man spake like this man, or lived like this man, or 
died like this man, or was like this man. And being, by 
the perfection of His moral character, and by the purpose 
of His benevolent mission, a truly exceptional person, it is 
only in keeping with the first blush, and with the deeper 
study of His wondrous life, to believe in signs and wonders 
attending His earthly career, showing whence He came, and 
illustrating what He came to do. Christ Himself is the 

* I must here refer to Domer's "Doctrine of the Person of Christ," 
where evidence is afforded of what I say. 

201 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



greatest of wonders in the history of the world. No other 
approaches Him in wisdom, love, beautifulness, and glory. 
In more senses than one His name is " above every name." 
Taking the four Gospels together, the Incarnation of the 
Word is associated with a supernatural birth. The miracle 
in the spiritual world of the manifestation of God in Jesus 
Christ, is coupled with the miracle in the physical world of 
the Virgin's conception. If Christianity be more than the 
republication of natural religion, if it be the revelation of 
God's redeeming love, it involves a miracle as the very 
starting-point of the process ; and the unfolding of the idea 
in the New Testament includes a divine manifestation, 
which is a miracle in history, and a divine bhth, which is a 
miracle in nature.* 

His advent in the world comes out in the four Gospels 
as a central sunlike mar^^el, and therefore it seems no impro- 
bability, but rather the clearest of all probabilities, that around 
Him there should revolve a planetary circle of miracles. 

Difficulties are needlessly created by forgetfulness of the 
character ascribed to this extraordinary Person. To argue 
as to what He did, or as to what He did not do, without a 
recognition of the actual One painted in the Gospels, is 
really to argue about another Christ, not the one whom 
Christians follow. 

• See again Martensen's " Christian Dogmatics," 220. 
202 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

Ill accordance with the view I have taken, is the manner 
in which the New Testament miracles are narrated. It 
seems assumed that such things might be expected in the 
wake of such a personage as the Son of God. They are not 
introduced as a procession of facts challenging supreme 
admiration. No flourish of trumpets heralds their march; 
but they follow as the fitting and humble retinue of Him 
who walked the earth its undisputed Master. The Evan- 
gelists write as men who were not astounded at what their 
Master did, because they were so filled with reverence and 
admiration, at the thought of what their Master was. 

Having considered the antecedent objections made to 
miracles, we are now prepared to look at what is really the 
nature of the miraculous testimony afforded to Christianity. 
And here, for the sake of simplifying the argument, I shall 
confine myself to the miracles ascribed to Christ. Faith in 
His miracles will lead to faith in the miracles of His 
apostles. If it be granted, as we contend from v/hat has 
been said it ought to be, that this is a case in which 
historical proof is admissible, then it is impossible to find 
stronger historical proof than comes to hand in support 
of the truth of the evangelical narratives. The historical 
proof, as such, has of late been comparatively fittle impugned; 
the assaults made on the prior credibility of supernatural 
facts being the main opposition with which befievers in 

203 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



Christianity have to contend. That opposition overcome, 
and the validity of competent witnesses, as to the 
question at issue, estabhshed, the course is free for an 
accumulation of evidence, such as Dr. Lardner, with rare 
erudition, has piled up in his volumes on the Credibility of 
the Gospel History : such as Archdeacon Paley, with unique 
ingenuity, and with singular felicity of arrangement and 
illustration, has condensed in his view of the Evidences of 
Christianity.* The works now mentioned do not, it must 
be confessed, supply all that is wanted for the settlement of 
the question, according to the phase it assumes at present. 
But when scientific and metaphysical difficulties of modern 
creation have been grappled with and removed, the array 
of pagan and Christian testimonies in support of the original 
credibility of the Evangelists, as collected by these and other 
\vriters, comes to render service of immense value. It is 
more than any one has yet attempted, to overturn, by 
citation against citation, criticism against criticism, argument 
against argument, the bulwarks of historical defence built up 
by the researches of learned advocates. Indeed, the early 
historical evidence all goes one way. It is evidence without 
counter-evidence. 

And to pass for a moment to foreign literature. After the 

* I would also mention "The Divine Origin of Christianity," by 
John Sheppard. A work less known than it deserves to be. 

204 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

endeavours of Strauss and others to resolve much of the 
Gospel story into myths of a later age, and of Renan, to 
construct out of the original documents a French philo- 
sophical romance, we are provided with the works of 
Ebrard and Pressense, who have vindicated the truth of the 
New Testament story. 

It would be idle to attempt, within the compass of this 
lecture, any outline of the mass of matter brought together 
in this service. But I may be allowed to indicate that it 
may be arranged in three divisions. First, the concessions 
of the Jews. Talmudical writings imply that Jesus of 
Nazareth did many mighty works. The Toldoth jl^escliit 
relates a number of things, such as raising the dead, healing 
lepers, and restoring the lame. It represents people as 
falling down before Him, exclaiming, " Truly Thou art the 
Son of God."* The Christian miracles are allowed, but 
they are attributed to magic. " There can be no doubt," 
says Whately, "that this must have been (as our sacred 
writers tell us it was) what the adversaries of Jesus main- 
tained from the first. For if those who lived on the spot in 
His time had denied or doubted the facts of the miracles, 
and had declared that the accounts of them were false tales, 
and that no miracles had ever really been wrought, we may 

* Wagenseil's Confutation of the Toldoth Jeschu : Sheppard's 
**Divme Origm of Christianity," ii. 205, et seq. 

205 



THE A^ATURE AND VALUE OF 



Le sure that the same would have been said ever after by 
their descendants.'"^* Secondly, the admissions of heathens. 
The extracts from Celsus in Origen afford an abridged 
history of Jesus Christ, and acknowledge that He did many 
marvellous things. Celsus explains the fact by saying, Jesus 
went into Egypt, and having made trial of powers practised 
there, returned highly elated, and pronounced Himself a 
God.f Porphry speaks of Christian miracles as ^vrought by 
poor rustics through magical arts. J Julian does not con- 
tradict them when he contemptuously affirms, that Jesus did 
nothing in His lifetime worthy of remembrance, unless any 
one thinks it a mighty matter to heal lame and blind people, 
and exorcise demons in the villages of Bethsaida and 
Bethany. § To these heathen admissions, which are of 
considerable value, are to be added, thirdly, the affirmations 
of Christians. Miracles are asserted by them in manifold 
forms and in manifold writings. The Fathers follow in the 
wake of Apostles and Evangelists ; and, be it remembered, 
each New Testament author who testifies to these super- 
human achievements is an independent witness, so that their 
statements bear the value of as many concurrent proofs : and 

* Lessons on Christian Evidence, 33. 
f Celsus in Orig., L. i., § 28. 
X Hieron, T. ii. 334. 

§ Cyril contra Jul., L. vi., p. 191. See, respecting these and similar 
passages, Lardner's Credibility, vii. 225, 442, 627. 

206 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

if it should be said that, because they were Christians, they 
are partial witnesses, on the other hand it can be said that 
some of the Fathers, and all the New Testament writers, had 
become so, contrary to former habits and prejudices, in 
part, at least, through the very force of miracles, and that 
too at the cost of extraordinary self-sacrifice and suffering. 

I have not sufficient space to exhibit adequately the 
argument for the credibility of the New Testament witnesses. 
I must, however, observe that the force has not departed 
from the old-fashioned method of stating the case, namely, 
that you must accept them as competent and satisfactory; 
or you must believe either that they were dishonest men, 
intending to deceive, or that they were dupes of their own 
or of other people's fancies. I am disposed to extend the 
dilemma, and to say, that there is a third supposition, 
growing out of the junction of these two, the supposition 
(according to a not uncommon occurrence in the mysteries 
of human nature) that the witnesses might be partly the 
victims of delusion, and partly the inventors of fiction, that 
credulity and imagination might be both at work, the result 
being a fabrication of miracles, having no basis, or but an ex- 
ceedingly slender one, in facts occurring before men's eyes. 
With these alternatives under our view, the inquiry is. 
Which shall we apply to the witnesses of the miracles of 
Christ ? Renan has applied the composite supposition to 

207 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 

the witnesses of the resurrection. " On the Sunday morning, 
Mary Magdalene first came very early to the tomb. The 
stone was displaced from the opening, and the body was 
no longer in the place where they had laid it. At the same 
time the strangest rumours were sj^read in the Christian 
community. The cry, 'He is risen,' quickly spread 
amongst the disciples. Love caused it to find ready 
credence everywhere." "Such was the impression He had 
left in the hearts of His disciples, and of a few devoted 
women, that during some weeks more, it was as if He were 
living and consoling them. Had His body been taken 
away, or did enthusiasm, always credulous, create afterwards 
the group of narratives by which it was sought to establish 
faith in the resurrection } In the absence of opposing 
documents this can never be ascertained. Let us say, 
however, that the strong imagination of Mary Magdalene 
played an important part in this circumstance. Divine 
power of love ! Sacred moments in which the passion cf 
one possessed gave to the world a resuscitated God ! " No 
one is more ready than I am to do justice to the extra- 
ordinary literary merits of the " Vie de Jesus ^^ its lucid style, 
its descriptive power, its manifold charms ; but I cannot con- 
ceal my amazement that the author, with his exquisite genius, 
should adopt such a travestied rendering of the noblest of 

Bible stories. There are no documents, as he confesses, to 

208 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

work upon but the four Gospels ; and from these Gospels it 
distinctly appears that, so far from the witnesses produced 
being of the character he indicates, so far from their love 
snatching at anything within reach, however airy, out of 
which to weave a web of wonders, there were men amongst 
them slow of heart to believe what the prophets had written, 
and what Jesus had said about the resurrection ; men who 
. counted the report of that resurrection, when they first heard 
of it, as an idle tale, — one of whom even would not yield to 
sight itself, but demanded to touch the nail-prints in the 
holy palms, and to thrust his hand into the sacred side. 
And as to the women, when they came to the sepulchre on 
the third day, it was not to hail a risen Jesus, but to anoint 
a buried one. That persons represented by the histo- 
rians as burdened with doubts, and fears, and unbelief, 
and demanding demonstrative evidence, should have been 
finally convinced, and should have staked their all upon 
that conviction, removes them for ever utterly beyond 
all reasonable suspicion of dreaming strangely coloured 
dreams of their Lord's risen life, — to say nothing of 
collusion and fraud, — and places them at once amongst 
witnesses, who well knew what they said, and whereof they 
affirmed. 

The credibility of the witness borne to another resur- 
rection is also well established. For evidence of th^ 

209 X4 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



authenticity of the Gospel of St. John, I refer to Professor 
Lightfoot's lecture, and would only remark upon the nan-a- 
tive in this Gospel — a narrative so full of pathetic beauty — 
that it is impossible to explain away its details by possi- 
bilities of misapprehension, and pardonable exaggerations 
of extraordinary incidents. Thus much is indisputable, 
Lazarus was sick unto death. To all human appear- 
ance he died. He died, and was buried, and remained 
so long in the grave that it was believed the corruption of 
his corpse had commenced. Coincident with the utter- 
ance by Jesus, at the door of the tomb, of the words, 
" Lazarus, come forth ! " the body moved, arose, came 
forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes ; in con- 
sequence of which, "many of the Jews which came to 
Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on 
Him.^' Here were presented to the senses of witnesses 
phenomena involving the performance of a miracle. A dis- 
tinction has been justly drawn between testimony to pheno- 
mena cognizable by the senses, and mu-acles completely 
considered on their invisible and divine side, as well as their 
visible and human one. "Testimony," it is said, "can 
apply only to apparent sensible facts j testimony can only 
prove an extraordinary and perhaps inexplicable occurrence 
or phenomenon \ that it is due to supernatural causes is 
entirely dependent on the previous belief and assumption of 

2IO 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

the parties."* With the omission of the words ^'previous 
behef and assumption/' and the substitution of the words 
" reflection and conviction," — whether exercised and expe- 
rienced at the time or afterwards, — I accept the statement. 
Phenomena are immediately apprehensible; the cause is 
not so. A persuasion that the cause is miraculous arises in 
the mind as an inference from what is directly witnessed. 
But what is directly witnessed may be of such a nature as 
to compel the witness, as a reasonable person, to believe 
that what has taken place results from a supernatural 
interposition. This conviction implies, indeed, that the 
person believes in the existence of supernatural power 
— in other words, believes in the existence and agency of 
God — which belief may be described as a " previous belief:" 
but a conviction that particular phenomena are the result of 
a supernatural cause, depends on the exercise of reason in 
regard to the phenomena themselves. " No testimony," I 
admit, "can reach to the supernatural," directly, but it may 
reach it by implication. 

Keeping in view the distinction laid down, we say of the 
narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus, that no natural 
solution of the event recorded is within reach. Fraud, 
collusion, trickery, f are excluded by the character of Christ 

* "Essays and Reviews" (Baden Powell), 107, 

f That Renan should treat the Resurrection of Lazarus as a pious 

211 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



and of Lazarus : no reference to accidental coincidences, or 
to mesmerism, or to electric influences, or to any kno^^Tl 
physical agencies, meets the case. Nor is there room for the 
anticipation that the advancement of science will ever solve 
this problem. If a solution be attainable, we are shut up to 
the one solution accepted by Christians. To leave it un- 
solved, to refer it to the class of unaccountable phenomena, 
through a persistent determination not to believe in any- 
thing supernatural, in the face of all which can be said in 
reply to antecedent objections, is most unphilosophical. 

Let me here add, in reference to narratives of the 
miraculous, that it is easy to marshal a number of general 
reflections together, casting a slur upon evidence, and to 
invest with some plausibility its denial or non-acceptance. 
But, when we think how fallaciously, yet plausibly, general 
reflections may be employed for the contradiction of 
evidence, — ^liow, by reference to the proverbial exaggerations 
of travellers' stories, accounts of other countries, of their 
customs and productions, may be discredited ; how, by in- 
sisting upon men's liability to illusion, the observations of 
scientific inquirers may be set aside; how, by dwelling 
on credulity and passion, party spirit, and the like, historic 

fraud, and the one moral blot in the story of Christ, is the gi-eatest 
literary, as well as moral, blot in his " Vie de Jesus." See Hutton's 
Essays, i., 297. 

212 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

doubts may be conjectured respecting the existence of Na- 
poleon I,, and how, in the same way, historic doubts may be 
hereafter raised respecting a large part of the career of Na- 
poleon III. j we see how little such general reflections are 
to be trusted, how much more they may do to hinder the 
interests of truth than to help them.* The absurdity of the 
conclusions in such cases discredits the process by which 
they are reached. 

Let us not pass from this part of the subject without 
saying one word as to the presumption in favour of the New 
Testament narratives of miracles, when compared with narra- 
tives of miracles found elsewhere. Place side by side with 
the Scripture narratives the miraculous stories in the Apocry- 
phal Gospels, in the writings of the Fathers, in mediaeval chro- 
nicles, in modern legends of Saints, and one sees the force of 
a remark by an eminent German theologian : " The critical 
acumen of Niebuhr was, as is admitted, inferior to that of 
no man, and he has done away with only too much of the 
ancient history of Rome. Yet he acknowledged, *with 
respect to a miracle, in the strictest sense of the word, it 
needs but an unprejudiced and searching investigation of 
nature to perceive, that the miracles related are anything but 
absurd, and a comparison of them with the legends or so- 
called miracles of other religions, to recognize what a different 

* See Art. on Miracles in Smith's Die. 
213 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



spirit dv/ells in them.' " * To take only one step farther in thii 
direction, when it is asked, " What, if so many apparently 
competent witnesses were to assure you, that they had seei: 
such and such a miracle — mentioning the most monstrous 
absurd, fantastic, and ludicrous confusion of nature — would 
you believe them?" We answer in the words of a modern 
Writer : " We are only concerned with the miraculous 
under that form and those conditions under which it has 
actually by trustworthy report taken place, as subordinated 
to what has been called ' a general law of wisdom,' i.e. 
CO a wise plan and design in the Divine mind under which 
check the course of miracles has, so to speak, kept near to 
nature, just diverging enough for the purpose, and no more." f 

II. 

It is time to attend to the second part of our subject, the 
value of the miraculous testimony to Christianity. 

I. The miracles must not be taken alone ; they form a part 

of Christianity ; and therefore, to be rightly understood, 

they should hold in the mind an inseparable relation to the 

rest of Christianity. Christianity is its own evidence. Each 

portion harmonizes with the other portions. They yield 

mutual support. Miracles, therefore, are concurrent with 

* Niebuhr's " Lebensnacliriclaten, " quoted in Lutliardt's "Apologetic 
Lectvires," 2CO. 

f Mozley's " Lectures on Miracles, " 120. 

214 ' 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

other proofs. "External" and "internal" are convenient 
words, but they are liable to mischievous application. One 
objection to the word " external," as designating the evi- 
dence of miracles, is that it assumes them to be outside the 
Gospel — only bulwarks for defence, not pillars identical 
with the inner structure. It is curious that opposite classes 
of persons have attributed to miracles an externality which 
their place in Scripture will not allow. By one class, con- 
sisting of advocates for the evidence, miracles are presented 
as the chief part of the evidence, as marks indispensable for 
the authentication of Divine truth, yet quite ab extra things, 
placed round about the temple to ward off evil-disposed 
persons who would dare to violate the shrine. By another 
class, consisting of those who take exception to the miracles, 
they are also treated as things ah exfra^ things which may 
well be cut off from Christianity — burdens which there 
is no necessity it should be made to bear — a dress which 
disfigures it rather than otherwise, and which, for the sake 
of its progress in the world, had better be stripped off and 
cast away. These two modes of assuming one and the 
same thing, are as objectionable in themselves, as they are 
curious in their coincidence. 

The miracles really run into and intersect the lines of 
New Testament teaching from end to end. They are not 
seals externally attached, but contents deposited inside — • 

215 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



not post-marks showing simply whence the letter comes, but 
paragraphs written in the folded sheet. The ^'■intemar^ md 
the ^^exfer?jal" — if we may use the words in their popular 
currency — must occupy oiir attention together. Miracles 

cannot be torn from the life of Christ. His nature, charac- 
ter, teaching, wonders, constitute an unparalleled spiritual 
unity. Criticism here, of course, has its own department of 
duty to fulfil. "WTiat really constitute the synoptical Gospels 
and the Gospel of St. John, is its province to determine. 
Readings of MSS. require to be examined with an honest 
desire to render the fextus receptus as perfect as possible — a 
desire which a reverential regard for the genuine contents of 
the record must serve to stimulate. "VVlien all that labour 
has been accomplished, the miracles of the genuine rolls of 
Scripture are to be regarded as integral elements of faith. 
" The facts of Christianity," says Archdeacon Lee, " are re- 
presented by some as forming no part of its essential doc- 
trines ; they rank, it is argued, no higher than its external 
accessories. It is impossible to maintain this distinction. 
In the Christian Revelation the fact of the Resurrection is 
the cardinal doctrine, the doctrine of the Incarnation is the 
fundamental fact. Christianity exhibits its most momentous 
truths as actual realities? by founding them upon an histo- 
rical basiS; and by interweaving them with transactions and 

events which rest upon the evidence of sense."* 
* "Lectures on Miracles," 5. 
216 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

2. Miracles are reasonable attestations of a Divine 
mission. As such our Lord appeals to them, they " bear 
witness of me, that the Father hath sent me." As such 
Nicodemus received them : "We know that Thou art a teacher 
come from God : for no man can do these miracles that Thou 
doest, except God be with him." As such the poor blind man 
regarded them in that exquisite piece of na'iveti, in which he 
says, '' Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not 
from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes." As 
it is reasonable, in the case of an ambassador, to refer to his 
credentials in proof of his legitimate authority ; so it is 
reasonable, in the case of a professedly Divine teacher, to 
refer to signs and wonders he is capable of working, in proof 
of his Divine commission. 

Of vast importance is it that we should note precisely the 
point touched by the finger of miraculous evidence. It may 
be said, not only are miracles incapable of enforcing a train 
of argument, but they are incapable of establishing any 
moral or religious proposition. No physical demonstration, 
it may be alleged, can ever link itself on to a spiritual truth, 
because the two things belong to totally different spheres. 
We should get involved in metaphysical subtleties, were 
I to inquire thoroughly into this position. It is enough 
to say, that, admitting it, the exact point touched by mi- 
raculous evidence, is, according to the teaching of Scripture 

217 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



itself, the office sustained and X^^ commission borne by a person. 
"The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same 
works that I do, bear witness of me^ " Jesus of Nazareth, 
a man approved of God among you, by miracles, and won- 
ders, and signs, which God did hj Himr In these passages, 
the witness of miracles is attached to a person. " My works 
bear witness of me^^ says Jesus. They are the approval of 
" a man^^^ says Peter. The evidential force of them bears 
on Christ Himself, the sent of God. Thus considered, 
miracles free themselves from objections made to their com- 
petency to serve as direct proofs of spiritual truths. 

The miracles of Moses afford evidence of his Divine 
legation : in like manner the miracles of Jesus afford 
evidence of His Divine Messiahship. It is said of Him that 
" He taught them as one having authority, and not as the 
scribes." Authoritativeness is characteristic of His mode of 
teaching. "Verily, verily, I say unto you." He claimed a 
right to speak, as one who had power to command men 
that they should obey. There is in His utterance little of 
argument, but much of law. Miracles can add no force to a 
chain of reasoning, and you may say they cannot imme- 
diately demonstrate spiritual truth, but they afford a basis 
for the enunciation of a Divine message, a mandate of the 
Divine will. 

, Miracles, no doubt, come within relations to spiritual truth, 

218 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTnWNY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

through the medium of the miraculously demonstrated 
authority of its utterer; but spiritual truth has other dis- 
tinct and appropriate marks of its Divine origin and cha* 
racter. It contains an inward witness — it shines by its own 
light. It commends itself to men's consciences in the sight 
of God, and when believed, vindicates the justness and wis- 
dom of such belief. 

It cannot be too much insisted on, that miraculous 
evidence comes not out in Scripture by itself. The w^orks 
of Jesus include more than His miracles. The whole benefi- 
cent influence of His life is covered by the words, "who 
went about doing good." With the thought of what He did, 
stands associated the thought of what He was ; and with the 
character of His matchless life is interwoven the character 
of His matchless teaching. Miracles form but one strand in 
the cable which binds the Church's faith to Him who is the 
Anchor of her hope ; and they expose the ship to peril who 
untwist the rope, and lay upon that single strand the whole 
amount of strain — the entire stress of tension. Holy 
Writ warrants no such course ; but warns against it. " If 
there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, 
and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the 
wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, 
* Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and 

let us serve them ; ' thou shalt not hearken unto the words 

219 



THE XATURE AND VALUE OF 



of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams." JNIoses, himself 
a worker of mhacles, appeals to something beyond miracles 
as essential to the final establishment of religious authority. 
The moral proof is put in the foremost place, and no mere 
physical achievement can exercise exclusive force apart from 
that. And, as if to remind us of these words in Deuteronomy, 
we read in the last chapters of Revelation of men being de- 
ceived by the miracles of the beast, of the spirits of devils 
working miracles, and of the false prophet that wrought mira- 
cles. Thus the New Testament teaches us to bind the evi- 
dence of Christian miracles to that which shows how utterly 
different they are from all the pretensions of deceivers, from 
all the delusions of fanatics. To dwell on extraordinary 
incidents, apart from other considerations, is to open a door 
to superstition, and even revolting credulity. In this way, 
a belief in witchcraft, sanctioning most unrighteous and 
cruel laws, maintained its ground in England to the end of 
the seventeenth century. From anything like the unrea- 
sonableness of staking religious faith upon physical events 
or historical circumstances, simply because they are unac- 
countable upon any ordinary hypothesis of human affairs, 
the Gospel is perfectly free. He who appeals to His o-\\ti 
mighty works, appeals also to His own self-evidencing 
words, and to the moral disposition of His disciples. "To 
this end was I born, and for this cause came I into 

220 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. 
Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." " My 
doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me. If any man will 
do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of 
God, or whether I speak of myself. He that speaketh of 
himself, seeketh his own glory; but he that seeketh his 
glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness 
is in him." 

The solitary position assigned to the evidence of miracles 
in the controversies of the last century was mischievous to 
the interests of religion. I believe with Coleridge, " how little 
of divine, how little fitting to our nature a miracle is, when in- 
sulated from spiritual truths, and disconnected from religion 
as its end : " — and I would ask with him, " What then can we 
think of a theological theory, which, adopting a scheme of 
prudential legality, common to it with ' the sty of Epicurus,' 
as far at least as the springs of moral action are concerned, 
makes its whole religion consist in the belief of miracles ! " 
There is some room for this severe censure of theologians in 
the last century, who failed to insist " on the creating of a 
new heart, which collects the energies of a man's whole 
being in the focus of the conscience — the one essential 
miracle, the same, and of the same evidence to the ignorant 
and the learned, which no superior skill can counterfeit, 
human or demoniacal." I should assign a higher place to 

221 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



the physical miracle than Coleridge did, — but there is to my 
mind a true and deep sense in what he asks respecting the moral 
one : — " Is it not that implication of doctrine in the miracle, 
and of miracle in the doctrine, which is the bridge of com- 
munication between the senses and the soul ?"* Christianity 
as a whole, at the present time, establishes its claims by 
the new spiritual creation which it effects in its sincere 
■ disciples. And here, let me add : looking at the position 
of our inquiiy at the present day, it appears of great 
importance, not to lay down as a principle, that miracles 
are indispensable in the authorization of a Divine message. 
To do so hampers our argument. To do so contradicts 
Scripture, — " John did no miracle." If one eminent servant 
of the Most High could make good his authority without 
effecting any physical marvel, so might another. Regarding 
Jesus simply as a Divine Teacher, there would, then, be no 
absolute necessity for His working wonders in the fields of 
material nature. His moral acts. His freedom from moral 
defects, and the whole moral tenor of His life, would evince 
the holiness of His character, and the oneness of His o\\m 
spirit \nth that of the Father of spirits, the fountain of love 
and truth ; for what He said of men applied to Himself, "By 
their fruits ye shall know them." Yet, though I cannot see 
that miracles, as some think, were essential to the proof of 

* Coleridge's "Friend," iii., 104-6. 
222 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 



what He said respecting Himself, they are, as indicated 
already, what might be expected in one who was all that 
Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be j they also corroborate 
claims to spiritual authority, resting on other grounds ; 
and, still further, the manner in which some of them were 
performed, points to the higher nature which tabernacled 
in His humanity. 

The place in the sphere of evidence occupied by the 
miracles of Jesus, is not exactly the same to us that it was 
to the multitudes who witnessed them. I fully agree in the 
remark, '■'• We do not ask any one to begin with the miracles, 
— to regard power, and still more the record of power, 
centuries afterwards, as the one irresistible proof of the 
truth and Divine origin of a Revelation. This has been 
done — done perhaps too long — done certainly in this age 
without conviction."* A miracle never was the o?te irre- 
sistible proof It never was more than one amongst others. 
But at first it had a power of awakening attention, which it 
does not possess now. See7t, it irresistibly produced excite- 
ment, which led to inquiry. Recorded^ it fails of that effect. 
It is wise, at this time of day, to begin the exposition of 
Christian evidence by insisting on Christianity as a fact — as 
a moral spiritual power in the world j and then, examining 
its principles, and tracing its achievements to the beginning, 

* Dr. Vaughan's " Christ the Light of the Worid/' 172. 
223 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



to bring out the evidential worth of Christ's miracles as a 
crown on the head of other proofs. At the same, time it 
should be observed, that their pertinency as proofs remains 
unaltered. They are not less true for being old. They are 
as good witnesses now as they were eighteen centuries ago. 
What Avas done by Julius Caesar, what was done by Alex- 
ander the Great, as it appears on record, is still as valid an 
indication as ever, of the genius and prowess which the 
men possessed. So, what Jesus did, as we find it recorded in 
His fourfold memoirs, produces undiminished assurance of 
His superhuman character. If any one asks for miracles 
now, T reply, they are not wanted, they could not be used as 
credentials of one who left the world ages since. His own 
miracles, ascertained by history, will, to the end of time, 
in connection -with His whole life, avail as guarantees for 
faith in His Divine might and goodness. 

3. And, finally, the miracles promote the acceptance of 
Christian tmths by the illustrations of them which they 
afford. Christ's miracles are of the same description as the 
principles and precepts in Christ's teaching. They are ani- 
mated with benevolence, instinct with love. The Gospel 
perpetually offers to men a spiritual salvation ; INIuacles at 
the beginning brought them salvation of a lower kind, which 
nevertheless pointed to a higher. Of the author of Chris- 
tianity it might be said literally, " He is the Saviour of the 

224 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

body." His wondrous works of healing sparkled with a 
tenderness, compassion, and help, like those with which His 
main mission to mankind was filled. And, as they were 
eminently beneficial to human beings, and so were of the 
same class as the other bestowments the Christ of God 
came to confer, they exhibited types of the nobler bless- 
ings themselves. They are mirrors reflecting larger and 
better gifts. Signs they are as well as wonders; parables 
as well as proofs. In cures of the blind, there are parables 
of spiritual illumination; in the cleansing of lepers, parables 
of spiritual purification ; and in exorcisms, parables of spiritual 
disenthralment. 

The benevolent animus, and the didactic form of the 
miracles of Jesus seized the attention of early Christian 
writers, and were employed by them for the purpose of 
establishing and recommending the Christian religion. They 
used them much more under their illustrative than under 
their strictly evidential aspect. Arnobius (a.d. 306), in 
ten chapters of his seven books, ^^ Adversus Gtntes^' lays 
special stress upon their kind and beneficent tendency.^- 
Lactantius, his contemporary in his " Institutions," whilst 
regarding Christ's miracles as proofs of His higher nature, 
manifests particular delight in searching out their ethical 
significance. He goes through the mighty works of our 

* Ad. Gen. 1. i. c. 42. et scq. 

225 15 



THE NATURE AND VALUE OF 



Lord in order, and points out, how they demonstrated the 
renewal of the human soul, the opening of its eyes, the un- 
stopping of its ears, the loosening of its tongue.* And 
Athanasius (a.d. 326) takes special pains to show that the 
miracles of Jesus were revelations — self-representations of 
His Person as Divine Creator, not mere credentials of His 
doctrine, but veritable victories over nature, so that no one 
can doubt who Christ is, when once he beholds His 
works : — and moreover, that by the manner of His working 
miracles, He at once proved his Divinity, and His humanity, 
His Godhead and His incarnation, t And Augustine insists 
much on their design as symbolical of redemption, as in- 
structive acts, charged with prophetical import, and calcu- 
lated to inspire delight more than wonder. % 

These remarks and quotations bear chiefly on the relation 
of miracles to the spiritual blessings of the Gospel at the 
beginning. But miracles also sustain a very interesting 
relation to the like blessings as bestowed in after, and in 
present times. Wlien the spring is over, and its produce of 
blossoms has passed away, it is found, that though the 
ground is covered with leaves of white and pink, the 

* Inst. L. iv. c. 25. 

f Domer, in his Person of Christ (Clark's Trans.), ii. 254, dwells 
upon this subject as unfolded by Athanasius. See also Athanasius' third 
discourse against the Arians, § 32. 

X In Johan. Evan. Tract, 16, 24, 49. 

226 



THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

blossoms have set into precious fruit. They have be 
queathed more than blossoms. Each folded up a promise 
of what is richer than itself. The peach flower, the peach 
— the pear flower, the pear. We read in the Apocalypse, 
of the Tree of Life. Is not the Gospel the Tree of Life ? 
Is not Christ the Tree of Life } It is not fanciful to speak 
of the miracles as early blossoms. Long since they burst 
out profusely. Long since they fell. To some eyes, 
they may seem to lie in the paths of history, as withered 
leaves. But if the spring-time is past, the autumn-time has 
long since come. Christianity can tell of spiritual blessings 
which it has conferred on the children of men down to this 
day, and is conferring still. A tranquil conscience, a pure 
heart, a holy life, a hope that maketh not ashamed, — these 
are the clustering felicities, the manifold beatitudes, of the 
Gospel of Love. Thank God ! abundant has been the 
ingathering. Thank God ! abundant is the harvest, still 
waiting to be gathered. In nature the bloom is more 
plentiful than the fruit, but here the fmit is more plentifi'l 
than the bloom. 



227 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF 
REVELATION. 

BY THE RIGHT REVEREND 

THE LORD BISHOP OF CARLISLE. 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF 
REVELATION. 



When I undertook, at the request of the Christian Evi- 
dence Society, to deHver a lecture having for its title The 
Gradual Development of Revelation^ I confess that I did 
not perceive that the title was open to criticism. I thought 
that I understood the terms employed, and I still trust 
that this is so ; but a little consideration showed me that 
the language was not used very strictly, and that there 
was in it a confusion of metaphors, which might possibly 
be connected with a confusion of thought. 

This being so, I propose to introduce what I have to 
say by a short examination of the words which express the 
subject of my lecture : and I do so, as I need hardly say, 
not for the purpose of finding fault, but because it seems 
to me that I shall in this manner most easily explain the 
nature of the subject which I conceive to be committed to 
me, and indicate the manner in which I purpose to treat it. 

231 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

Now the word deveIoJ>?tienf, which Hke many other long 
words has become very common, is also, like many other 
words, not imfrequently used somewhat loosely. The root 
of it, the word ^.'elop, is unknown in any other form than 
the two words e?ivelo_pe and developeJ^' In mathematics, the 
word develope is used, as all words are, with the utmost 
precision. We speak oi developing a fu7iction^ that is, putting 
it into a new and unfolded form, which, however, shall be 
essentially equivalent to the original. So also we speak of 
developable surfaces^ that is, surfaces such as cones and 
cylinders, which can be unfolded and laid flat upon a plane 
without tearing. It will be seen that in these applications 
of the word the essential thought is that of a change, by a 
process of unfolding, in the condition of something which 
you already possess ; and this I take to be the true defini- 
tion of development. 

From this, however, we easily pass to a cognate meaning 
of the term. Thus we speak of the development of an idea, 
that is, the unfolding and applying of the results of an 
original thought, a discovery or principle, which were truly 
contained in it from the first, but were not from the first 
perceived to be so contained. For example, we say that 
railways are only a development of the original idea of 

* Sea Brachet's " Dictionnaire Etymologique, " sub voc : Developper^ 

232 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

turning to account the expansive force of steam ; or that 
Newton's "Principia" and Laplace's " Mecanique Celeste/' 
and, in fact, the whole of modern physical astronomy, are 
developments of the idea, or fact, call it which you will, of 
the universal gravitation of matter j or that the British consti- 
tution of this century is a development of Magna Charta; 
and so forth. What we mean by this language is that the 
essential principles of the development were implicitly con- 
tained in the original idea, and that one has been derived 
from the other somewhat in the same way as that in which 
the bird comes from the egg and the plant from the seed. 

Dr. Newman, in his Essay " On the Development of 
Christian Doctrine," takes a somewhat different view. He 
speaks of the development of an idea as follows : " When 
some great enunciation, whether true or false, about human 
nature, or present good, or government, or duty, or religion, 
is carried forward into the public throng and draws atten- 
tion, then it is not only passively admitted in this or that 
form into the minds of men, but it becomes a living prin- 
ciple within them, leading them to an ever-new contempla- 
tion of itself, an acting upon it, and a propagation of it. 
Such is the doctrine of the natural bondage of the will, or 
of individual responsibility, or of the immortality of the 
soul, or of the rights of man, or of the divine right of kings, 
or of the hypocrisy and tyranny of priestcraft, or of the 

233 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

lawfulness of self-indulgence Let one such idea get 

possession of the popular mind, or the mind of any set 
of persons, and it is not difficult to understand the effects 
which will ensue."* Taking this view, there is manifestly 
a difficulty in determining whether an idea has been rightly 
or wrongly developed, whether the growth be wholly from 
the root or partly parasitical ; and the prime intention of 
Dr. Newman's book is to supply tests of genuine develop- 
ment, and to apply them in one particular case ; but I wish 
it to be perceived that whether we take this wider view, or 
the stricter one which I endeavoured to present to you just 
now, it is essentially necessary to regard development as 
the exhibition in a new unfolded form of that which already 
existed in another. 

When therefore we speak of development with reference 
to God, we must regard Him as the developer, and His 
eternal purposes as the thing developed : the point which 
I have to bring before you with reference to its bearing 
upon the faith of Christians, and the unbelief of those who 
scruple to be regarded as disciples of Christ, is the gradual 
character of the process by which God has developed His 
purposes. 

And this being the meaning of development, I think it is 

* ** Essay on Development," page 35. 
234 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

manifest that it is a confusion of figures to speak of the 
develop7?ie7it of a revelatio7i. To reveal is to di^aw back a veil, 
and so to uncover something which was concealed before. 
Hence we can properly speak of God as revealing to us His 
person, His character, His will. His person is eternal and 
unchangeable ; so is His character ; so is His will ; but He 
uncovers and shows these to us ; it may be by Holy Scrip- 
ture, it may be by the living voice, or the life, or the person 
of the Lord Jesus Christ ; but however it be, the conception 
appropriate to the word revelation is that of something which 
exists independently of our minds, and which is uncovered, 
so that our minds can perceive it. Revelation, therefore, 
cannot be developed \ if we use the word as meaning the 
process of revealing, then this is a different process from that 
of developing \ and if we use the word as meaning object- 
ively the knowledge which has been revealed, the knowledge 
which we obtain of God by revelation, then this knowledge 
comes to us in an already developed form : it is not an idea 
to be developed, but a truth to be received. 

On the whole, I regard as the most important word in the 
title of my lecture, the v^ord gradual : whether we speak of 
the development of His eternal purposes and intentions, or 
the revelation of His person and character, the process 
appears to have been a gradual one, and in a certain sense 
a slow one : and this gradualness of operation may be vari- 

23s 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION, 

ously estimated according to the turn of mind and habits of 
thought of him who considers it : some will be content simply 
to bow their heads and worship as being in the presence of 
Him whose ways are past finding out : some will say that 
that which Christians believe to be the development of His 
purposes and the revelation of His person is inconsistent 
with their conceptions of God, and so will reject it : others 
will hesitate to reject on a priori grounds that which, to say 
the least, admits of a strong argument in its favour, but will 
confess that they feel the difficulties v/hich have been urged 
against the creed of Christendom j and with regard to that 
particular phase of difficulty with which I am professing to 
deal in this lecture, they will say, and perhgtps say with sad- 
ness, that the revelation which the volume of Holy Scripture 
purports to contain, does not commend itself to their minds, 
as corresponding to their highest thoughts of that which God 
might be expected to do in making Himself known to man. 
Now it is to minds in this condition that considerations con- 
cerning the doings of God may be hopefully offered. I do 
not see how it is possible to treat such a subject as mine, if 
I consider myself as speaking to persons who deny the 
impossibility of revelation as distinct from human knowledge : 
if a revelation be hnpossible, per se, it is useless to discuss 
the qualities of that particular form of revelation which 
Christians profess to have received ; but if a man is willing 

236 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

to receive a revelation, and has something of the spirit indi- 
cated by the words, " Oh, that I knew where I might find 
Him," then it does seem to be possible to offer some sug- 
gestions which shall tend to show that the manner of reve- 
lation which Holy Scripture exhibits is in harmony with all 
that we know of our Creator from other sources, and that 
the gradual character of the Divine operations, as exhibited 
in that history which culminates in the Lord Jesus Christ, is 
wonderfully analogous to the character of every other opera- 
tion which we can rightly call divine. 

Let us then observe what the revelation of God purports 
to be ; and for the special end which I have in view, I 
think we may suitably divide it into the following principal 
steps : — 

1. That made to Adam and Eve ; 

2. That made to Abraham ; 

3. That made to Moses j 

4. That made in and by Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Let us look at each of these for a moment. 

The revelation to Adam and Eve is represented as being 
of the simplest kind possible. In fact it is difficult to conceive 
how anything beyond a very simple and partial revelation 
could be possible in the very infancy of humanity. It 
amounts to little more than the revelation of God as a 
personal governor, whose will must be obeyed : a command 

237 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

is given ; that command is broken, and a punishment is 
inflicted ; and then mankind is represented as cast out 
of Eden into the wild, uncultivated world. It is neces- 
sar}^ to realize the extreme simplicity of this history, and 
the imperfect character of the revelation : the more so, 
because there is some temptation to imagine Adam and 
Eve as being in the possession of more knowledge than 
Scripture attributes to them ; Scripture in reality attributes 
no knowledge to them, but rather represents the tree of 
knowledge as having been the cause of their fall. Philoso- 
phically speaking, we may describe the condition of things 
which existed in Eden as being the dawn of man's religious 
consciousness ; he has no responsibility, and no sin ; but a 
law is imposed upon him, and thus comes responsibility, 
and thus by the breach of law comes sin : man " was alive 
without the law once, but when the commandment came 
sin revived," and man " died." 

The sacred history represents the world as engaged, so to 
speak, in working out the results of this primitive revelation 
till the time of Abraham. God is represented as punishing 
the evil and rewarding the good, the punishment of the 
evil being the more conspicuous conduct of the two ; thus 
Cain is punished, the people in the days of Noah are 
punished, the builders of the tower of Babel are punished: 

but I do not think it can be said that the being and cha- 

238 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

racter of God are any further revealed till the thue of 
Abraham. Then we have the new fact of God calling out 
a family; granting to that family special promises and special 
privileges, and making it (as it were) the depository of the 
fortunes of the world. Probably this is a step which we 
should not have expected ; possibly it may even be argued 
that it is no real step in advance ; but, be this as it may, it 
is represented in Scripture as the next step in the process of 
revelation ; whether it strike us as strange or not, we are 
compelled, on the hypothesis that Scripture contains the 
history of revelation, to regard Abraham and his family as 
a point, a station, in the process. 

And so we come to Moses. I am disposed, however, to 
regard the Mosaic revelation as differing in degree rather 
than in kind from that made to Abraham. A family was 
called in Abraham, a nation in Moses ; but in the one case 
as in the other, the fortunes of the whole world were bound 
up with the history and conduct of a chosen few ; the family 
of Abraham was a peculiar and chosen family, the Israelites 
whom Moses made into a nation were a peculiar and chosen 
people : the principle was the same, namely that of selec- 
tion, and whatever difficulty belongs to one case, belongs 
equally to the other. 

It would be a long task, and for my purpose an un- 
necessary one, to trace the gradual progress of the revela- 

239 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

tion made "in sundry times and in divers manners" to the 
Israelitish church and people ; beginning with the grand 
announcement of the Name of God from the Burning Bush, 
and continued by the declaration of the law in the wilder- 
ness, rendered visible, so to speak, by the sacrificial ritual, 
and expounded by priests and prophets, it gradually became 
clearer and clearer, until "the fulness of time" came, and 
" God sent forth His Son made of a woman." I need not 
say that to Christians this is emphatically the revelation of 
God — " he who has seen the Son has seen the Father." All 
previous revelations are only preparatory for this ; and when 
we have received this, all others seem to be lost, just as the 
moon and stars which shine so brightly at night are abso- 
lutely extinguished as soon as the sun is risen. Assuming 
all this, however, it may be worth while to remark, first, 
that Jesus Christ expressly connected Himself with all that 
had gone before, saying that He " came not to destroy, but 
to fulfil; " and secondly, that He, like Moses and Abraham 
before Him, founded an IfCKXrjam, or church, as a deposi- 
tory of the fortunes of mankind, only with this difierence 
or extension of principle, that whereas the church of Abra- 
ham was a family, and the church of ]\Ioses was a nation, 
the church of Christ was catholic, knowing no distinction 
of family or nation, but embracing all who were willing to 
take Him as their Captain, and His Cross as their banner. 

240 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

This sketch, slight as it is, of the progress of revelation, 
as presented to us in Holy Scripture, will be abundantly- 
sufficient for my present purpose. In considering its claims 
to be received by mankind, I think it should be at once 
candidly owned, as seems indeed to be conceded in Holy 
Scripture, that the method of revelation is probably different 
from anything which we should have expected on general 
grounds of reason. Perhaps it is difficult, it may be im- 
possible, to say very precisely what we should have ex- 
pected ; but certainly I think we should not have expected 
to have found the principal revelations of God made, as 
they are alleged to have been made, to a selected 
family, a selected nation, a selected corporate body. It 
is only candid to acknowledge that, from a philosophical 
point of view, we may here see a great difficulty ; and the 
difficulty becomes more salient when we look out of the 
narrow groove of sacred history into the wide history of 
the world at large. There we find a remarkable growth of 
knowledge, and an exhibition of the highest powers and 
gifts of humanity, quite separated from that region which 
is asserted to have been specially illuminated with light 
from heaven. The progress of our knowledge of the litera- 
ture of ancient nations, and a greater familiarity with the 
thoughts and feelings of people outside the Christian pale, 
have tended to tlirow this difficulty into stronger relief : our 

241 16 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 



old acquaintance with Greece and Rome, our more recent 
acquaintance with such countries as India and China, have 
made us aware that, somehow or other, great Hght did shine 
upon these countries in olden days, and it is harsh to say 
that the light did not come from heaven. Let, therefore, the 
difficulty be frankly acknowledged ; while at the same time 
it is also acknowledged that in a matter so much beyond 
the scope of our faculties as that of saying in what manner 
God can best reveal Himself to mankind, all difficulties 
depending upon the strangeness or unexpectedness of a 
method alleged to have been adopted, must in the nature 
of things be of less than first-rate magnitude, and must give 
way to sufficient evidence. 

Acknowledging, however, as frankly as can be desired, 
the difficulty here stated, I observe that there is anyhow a 
remarkable consistency in the scheme of revelation which 
Scripture contains. One step leads naturally to another; 
and looking at the whole course of Scripture history, from 
the first verse of the Book of Genesis to the last verse 
of the Book of Revelation, it is wonderful (perhaps upon 
any infidel hypothesis, more than wonderful) how the 
various parts hang together, and how the beginning, the 
middle, and the end seem to dovetail themselves together 
into one connected and consistent whole. I do not know 

that I have ever been more struck with this, than when 

242 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

reading the recent work on " The History and Literature of 
the Israehtes," by C. and A. de Rothschild. In this work 
we have the advantage of seeing the Old Testament ex- 
hibited in a reverent and loving spirit without the New, and 
as it might have appeared if Jesus Christ had not been 
born. Any one reading the book would be impelled to say 
that the influence of the literature of the Israelites must 
be for the improvement and enlightenment of mankind ) but 
the questions press upon the mind of the reader — at least 
they did upon mine — " What does all this lead to ? What 
has become of these Israelites ? and what is the meaning of 
the language of their prophets ? " In fact, the book seems 
to put the reader very much in the position of the Ethiopian 
nobleman in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, who 
was prepared by reading some of the "literature of the 
Israelites " to receive from Philip the evangelist the preach- 
ing of the name of Jesus. The New Testament seems 
exactly to fit upon the Old ; and that gradual progress of 
revelation which we notice in the Old Testament, seems to 
lead up to, and find its completion and explanation in, the 
history which is contained in the New. 

On the whole, looking at the scheme of revelation as 
it appears in Scripture, and as it has been illustrated by 
history, both profane and sacred, I believe that I discern 
these features. I see the knowledge of God emerging from 

243 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

very obscure beginnings, and imparted in very unexpected 
ways ; I see, however, that this knowledge does somehow or 
another not merely remain with mankind, but increase and 
become clearer and more influential; I see a particular 
family and nation selected for the reception and spread of 
this knowledge, and the family and nation so selected, after 
going through much education and many vicissitudes, pro- 
ducing at length One in whom the whole history appears to 
culminate, and then disappearing from all position of influ- 
ence upon the fortunes of the world except through this one 
pre-eminent member. Still farther, I perceive, and it is 
absolutely impossible for the most sceptical to deny, that the 
name of this remarkable member of the selected family and 
nation has been the most potent that has ever been named, 
and that His influence in the world has been and is far 
greater, more extended, and more intense in its action, than 
any other influence which has ever been brought to bear 
upon the human heart and mind. Even in the v/ork to which 
I referred just now, in which the Old Testament alone comes 
under consideration, the dates of the history are given by 
reference to the birth of Jesus Christ ; and whatever view 
men may be disposed to take of the more mysterious and 
transcendental allegations concerning the life of Jesus of 
Nazareth, it is impossible to deny that the civilization and 
improvement of the world, and the purification of human 

244 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

society and the like, are more connected with His Name 
than with that of any other philosopher or teacher or leader 
of mankind. When I say that it is impossible to deny this, 
I am of course aware that it has been denied, and thattheie 
are and have been persons who have asserted that Christi- 
anity has not only not been that which Christians believe it 
to have been, but has been positively detrimental to human 
progress ; but what I mean is, that to make the denial to 
which I refer, is so contrary to the general verdict of man- 
kind that it is hard for any one to make it, and impossible 
for any one who is at all likely to be influenced by anything 
that I can say. For those who are at all likely to be influ- 
enced are persons who are sceptical^ not those who are 
ajttagojiisHc J a man may doubt — who has not doubted ? — 
and a man may be tortured by his doubts, and it may be 
possible to relieve him ; but I see no probability of helping 
that man who has come to the conclusion that the influence 
of Jesus Christ has been a mischievous and obstructive in- 
fluence in the history of human progress ; with such a man, 
I, at least, as a Christian apologist, do not feel that I have 
any common ground. 

Taking then the view of revelation to which I have re- 
ferred as being that contained in Holy Scripture, and ac- 
knowledging that such a view presents difficulties to thought- 
ful and inquiring minds, I wish to examine and see whether 

245 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 



we cannot find some help towards a right appreciation of 
God's method of revelation by examining the com-se of 
nature, or that which is supposed to be its course. 

And when we look to nature with this purpose, it is im- 
possible not to be struck by this general fact, namely, that 
gradualness of development appears to be a universal law. 
The manner in which the original design of the Creator (for 
I assume that there was an original design) has been carried 
out, so far from being sudden, has been very slow;* and more 
than this, the method of operation has been frequently such 
as we should scarcely have expected, and greatly opposed to 
those notions of creative majesty which most of us are very 

* I will here quote the words of a great man, who has for many years 
been one of the chief scientific ornaments of this country, and whose de- 
parture from this life, at the ripe age of seventy-nine years, I see, with 
much sorrow, recorded in the Twies of this day. 

Speaking of the manner in which the universe has come into its pre- 
sent condition, and is preserved in that condition, and of the possibihty 
of colUsion amongst the constituent bodies, Sir John Herschel says : 
** Ages, which to us may well appear indefinite, may easily be conceived 
to pass without a single instance of collision, in the nature of a catas- 
trophe. Such may have gradually become rarer as the system has 
emerged from what must be considered as its chaotic state, till at length, 
in the fulness of time, and under the pre-arranging guidance of that 
Design which pervades universal nature, each individual may have 
taken up such a course as to annul the possibility of further destructive 
interference." — Outlines oj Astronomy, p. 600. 

I quote these words for the sake of the phrase which they contain, 
and the importance of which it is impossible to exaggerate, " The pre- 
arranging guidance of that Design which pervades universal nature." 

246 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

much disposed to preconceive. In order to put this clearly 
before you, let me call your attention to the very picturesque 
and poetical view of creation, contained in Chateaubriand's 
" Genie du Christianisme." That work appeared after the 
explosion of the volcano of the first great French revolution, 
and was intended to reconcile the minds of men, weary with 
the infidelity and atheism which had so long been rampant, 
to the views of God contained in Holy Scripture, and 
maintained by Christians. Writing with this purpose, 
M. Chateaubriand tells us that we may conceive of the 
Creator as having called the world into existence in a condi- 
tion as complete, and having as many marks of antiquity, as 
we now see about us : when this earth was created there 
would be already ancient forests, and abundance of animals, 
some in their maturity, others dancing about in the friskiness 
of youth ; the trees would be furnished with birds' nests, 
and the crows and pigeons would be hatching their eggs, or 
tending their young; the butterflies and moths would be 
sporting on the plants ; the bees would be making honey 
from the new-formed flowers ; the sheep would be followed 
by their lambs ; and the nightingales would be astonishing 
themselves with their first, yet perfect songs, in all the 
groves. Finally, Adam would be a man of thirty, and Eve 
a girl of sixteen. "Without this original antiquity," says 

our author, "there would have been neither pomp nor 

247 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

majesty in the work of the Eternal; and, which could not 
well be, nature in her innocence would have been less fair 
than she is now in her corruption. An insipid infancy of 
plants, animals, elements, would have crowned a world de- 
void of poetry." * No doubt this description is anything but 
devoid of poetry ; it is perhaps the only way in which a 
poet would be disposed to conceive of creation ; it is difficult 
to imagine the music of Haydn set to any other description 
of the creative work ; but undoubtedly it is not scientific, 
and, what is more, it is not Scriptural. Chateaubriand no 
more got his picture of creation from the Book of Genesis 
than Ernest Renan got his picture of Jesus Christ from 
the four Gospels ; and that there may be no mistake about 
this latter point, let me ask you to observe that the most 
marked and salient feature of the Bible picture of creation is 
the gradualness of the creative work. I do not say that the 
picture is not poetical j I believe it to be quite as poetical 
as that which Chateaubriand would substitute for it, and I 
quite admit that it ought to be regarded from a poetical 
rather than a scientific point of view ; still gradualness of 
development is the most marked and salient of its features : 
first, a chaos of matter without life ; then vegetable life ; 
then the lower forms of animal life \ then mammals ; 
and lastly, man. No one can deny that these and other 

* ** Le Genie du Christianisme, " Bk, iv., chap, v, 
248 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

steps, spread over the time which is indicated by the myste- 
rious creative days, do together make up the Bible history 
of physical creation ; and no one can fail to perceive that the 
order of proceeding is as different as possible from that de- 
scribed by the French apologist. According to this latter 
view, creation starts forth, Minerva-like, from the mind of 
God ; according to Scripture, the work is expressly gradual 
and presumably slow. We are so accustomed to the first 
chapter of Genesis, that I think we sometimes scarcely per- 
ceive its peculiarities j but suppose that the reverse order of 
arrangement had been adopted, and that man in deference 
to his dignity had been represented as coming in first, and 
that other creatures had been represented as being made 
afterwards for his use and pleasure, would not this have made 
a radical change, and introduced an enormous scientific 
difficulty ? I remember once being told by a person, who 
held strong views with regard to the dangerous character of 
the conclusions of geology, that it seemed to him abso- 
lutely incredible that a period should have existed when the 
earth was inhabited by nothing but fishes, reptiles, and the 
like; yet this is precisely what Scripture affirms to have been 
the fact ; and if the creative work had been concluded with 
the fifth day, there would have been no mammals upon the 
earth, and no man. 

Gradualness in creative work, therefore, is so far from 

249 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 



being contrary to the indications of God's method given 
in Scripture, that it is one of the few things which stand out 
from the scriptural account with undeniable prominence. 
That this same feature is not less prominent in the results 
of all the physical sciences, it would take more time and 
more ability to demonstrate than are at my command; 
nevertheless it is necessary that I should ask you kindly to 
accompany me, while I endeavour to show you that the 
conclusions of science, and even the guesses of scientific 
men, point to this conclusion, and tend to make un- 
tenable any objections to the revelation of God con- 
tained in Scripture, on the ground of the gradual man- 
ner in which that revelation is alleged to have been 
made. 

The general evidence of geology is familiar probably to 
most of us, and it is only the general evidence with which 
I can desire to deal on such an occasion as this ; but 
pray observe that while the particular conclusions of geology, 
like those of other physical sciences, are liable to continued 
modification and amendment, the general drift of the con- 
clusions is sufficiently clear and certain. No one can doubt, 
for instance, the great antiquity of our globe, and the fact 
that it has gone through successive changes with regard to 
the character of its surface, the nature of its inhabitants, 
and the like. Undoubtedly there was a time when civilized 

250 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

men did not dwell upon it -, undoubtedly there was a still 
more distant period when men did not dwell upon it in 
any form, civilized or uncivilized; perhaps there was a 
period even more distant, when life was not to be found 
upon the earth's surface at all. And physical astronomy 
will take us even beyond geology, and will make it probable 
that the earth was originally in a fluid condition, in which 
from the excessive temperature no form of life could have 
existed. Few problems are more curious than that which 
deduces the present figure of our globe from the hypothesis 
of original fluidity. Take a mass of fluid, and set it revolving 
slowly about an axis, as our earth revolves, and it can be 
shown that it will assume such a form as that which our 
earth has. I do not lay stress upon the remarkable numeri- 
cal coincidence of the ellipticity of the earth, as derived by 
Laplace from theory, with that which is discovered by obser- 
vation, because this involves certain arbitrary hypotheses ; 
but taking those results which involve nothing arbitrary at 
all, it is almost impossible not to believe that the earth was 
at one time a hot fluid mass, and that it has gradually 
cooled down and hardened into its present permanent 
condition. 

Look upon the earth then as being once in this hot fluid 
condition. It turns slowly round upon its axis and cools. 
I cannot trace the whole of the process, but before it 

251 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

arrived at its present condition there must have been 
crackings and burstings and eruptions ; and so continents 
and islands and mountains would be formed ; but upon the 
whole, even in the wildest times, the process would be very- 
gentle, for the highest mountains on the earth's surface are 
but as the down upon the surface of a peach. Then upon 
this globe appear creatures suited to its condition ; and the 
eye which could have watched the world in its progress 
would have seen animals of successively higher types 
occupying the earth's surface, till at length that surface was 
spotted with cities built by the hand of man, and the ocean 
studded with his ships. It is impossible to guess the time 
which must have elapsed between the epoch when the earth 
was a hot revolving mass of fluid, and the epoch in which 
we live ; neither is it very possible to say, though it is 
possible to guess, what would have been the successive 
scenes presented by the earth to the eye which should have 
witnessed the whole of the changes ; but whatever may have 
been the nature of the changes, this conclusion is inevitable, 
namely, that there has been a progression of some kind 
from the fluidity of the primeval dead revolving mass to 
the inhabited world of this nineteenth century ; it matters 
not for my argument whether the progression, so far as 
animal life is concerned, has been due to natural selection, 
or to such a process as that advocated by the author of 

2^2 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

'"Vestiges of Creation," or to successive and distinct creative 
acts; the fact holds good, upon any hypothesis, that the 
Almighty" Creator has produced that universe which we see, 
not by one act, but by a gradual and apparently very slow 
creative process, whether continuous or discontinuous it 
matters not for my purpose to inquire. 

Now this course of nature is strikingly analogous to that 
gradual mode of proceeding which is alleged to belong to 
revelation ; and any difficulty which belongs to one appears 
to attach equally to the other. Nay, if we are to give any 
weight to the most recent physical speculations, it may be 
fairly argued that the difficulties connected with revelation 
are but as trifles compared with those which nature presents. 
I refer to those views of which the latest exposition is to be 
found in Mr. Darwin's " Descent of Man." Let me touch 
upon those views for a moment. 

It seems that " the early progenitors of man were once 
covered with hair, both sexes having beards ; their ears were 
pointed and capable of movement ; and their bodies were 
provided with a tail, having the proper muscles. . . . The 
males were provided with great canine teeth, which served 
them as formidable weapons. ... At a still earlier period, 
the progenitors of man must have been aquatic in their 
habits." And lastly, '' the most ancient progenitors in the 
kingdom of the Vertebrata, at which we are able to obtain 

253 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

an obscure glance, apparently consisted of a group of marine 
animals resembling the larvae of existing ascidians." This is 
certainly a somewhat alarming conclusion ; looking however 
to the ascent (for so I think it ought to be called) rather than 
the descent., it would seem to be the view of some of our 
advanced natural investigators, that the marine animals in 
question produced certain lowly organized fishes ; these 
produced ganoids and the like; these produced amphi- 
bians ; — here there seems to be a difficulty — " No one," 
writes Mr. Darwin, " can at present say by what line of 
descent the three higher and related classes, namely, mam- 
mals, birds, and reptiles, were derived from either of the two 
lower vertebrate classes, namely, amphibians and fishes." 
However, once get to the mammals, and all difficulty ceases : 
the Monotremata produced the Marsupials ; these the pla- 
cental Mammals : thus we come to the Lemurid^e, and from 
them the interval is not great to the Simiadse j the Simiadae 
branched off into two great stems, — the New World and Old 
World Monkeys \ and " from the latter at a remote period, 
Ma7i, the wonder and glory of the universe, proceeded."* 

Of this pedigree, which, "if not of noble quality," is "of 
prodigious length," Mr. Darwin tells us "we need not feel 
ashamed." Perhaps not ; though certainly the nerves of 
any one unaccustomed to anthropological investigations may 

♦ "Descent of Man, "p. 208. 
254 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

be excused for trembling slightly as he hears it recited; but 
the point which I wish to press is this, that supposing (for 
argument's sake) this view of man's origin, or anything like 
it, to be true, it is impossible to imagine a more thorough 
case of gradual development ; there is nothing in the religi- 
ous history of mankind as expounded in Holy Scripture so 
amazingly marvellous as that which is contained in this 
physical history ; and certainly those who are prepared to 
receive the Darwinian view of the development of man's 
body, ought not to find anything to offend them on the 
ground of improbability in the Scriptural account of the reve- 
lation made by God to the human soul. 

I do not know to what extent Mr. Darwin's views are 
likely to be permanent ; but supposing that they, or any view 
of the same class, should eventually overcome all existing 
difficulties, and be generally regarded as representing the 
process by which it has pleased God to bring about man's 
physical and mental supremacy, then it can hardly seem 
strange that the same God should have adopted a course of 
progress and development in the spiritual and religious 
world. I say, emphatically, " if it has pleased God " to act 
thus j because if I accept the hypothesis of the nebular origin 
of planetary systems, or the supposition of the earth being 
a fluid globe gradually cooled, or even the assertion that our 
most ancient progenitors were marine animals, I must do so 

255 



■ THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

with the underlying assumption that it has pleased God so 
to work. I do not find fault with scientific men for not put- 
ting their theories in this form ; but looking at the question 
from a religious, or even from a philosophical, point of view, 
I cannot consent to lose sight of God, as the intelligent 
maker of the whole. If this earth was originally a fluid mass, 
then I believe that that was the best, or, for anything I know 
to the contrary, the only way of making a world ; if the 
marine animals, which Mr. Darwin sees through his scientific 
telescope, did become fish, and those fish eventually became 
men, then I believe that that was the best, or, for anything I 
know to the contrary, the only way of making men ; and this 
being so, why m.ay I not deal in the same manner with the 
alleged course of man's spiritual history? I have in my 
hands something which purports to be a revelation to my 
intellect, and to my soul, of the God who made me : that 
revelation is contained in a history which tells me that God 
spake at sundry times and in divers manners to the people 
of olden time, and that finally He spake by One who is 
called His Son. Now I do not say that this revelation is or 
is not a real one ; but I do say that there is nothing to render 
us suspicious of its reality in the fact that it has been com- 
municated gradually, that it has grown as the human race 
has grown, and that some of the steps in the process of 

revelation appear strange, or even, at first sight, unworthy of 

256 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

the grand scheme of which they form a part. No one has a 
right to find fault on this ground who has read the lessons of 
natural science, and observed how it points to gradual pro- 
gression as a characteristic of the doings of God. Least 
of all can they find fault on this ground, who receive in 
whole, or even in part, the recent theories concerning the 
origin of man. I will not undertake to answer for those 
students who have gone deeply into these physical ques- 
tions; but I do assert, without fear of contradiction, that 
to men of ordinaiy education, and ordinary habits ot 
thought, the difficulties of accepting Scripture as the reve- 
lation of God to the human soul, however much those 
difficulties may be expounded or even exaggerated, are 
absolutely nothing as compared with the difficulty of ac- 
cepting recent views of man's prodigious pedigree. 

The fact is, that it is not so much the process by which 
a result has been brought about, as the result itself, which 
is the all-important thing. Whatever may have been the 
history of our earth in the dark dim distance of incalculable 
ages, we know that its present condition is very beautiful, 
and that it answers admirably well the purpose for which it 
seems to have been originally designed, namely, that of 
serving for the residence of intelligent man ; and whatever 
may have been the process by which that creative work was 
consummated, which is described in Scripture as the making 

257 17 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

of man out of the dust, and breathing into his nostrils the 
breath of life, we know that man is high above all the rest 
of creation, and worthy of being spoken of as being made in 
the image of God. And so in the case of man's spiritual 
history, we need not be over-careful to criticize the several 
steps when we are able to see the result ; the question is, 
not so much whether the steps of God which we trace in 
Old Testament history be such steps as we should imagine 
that the Most High would have left, as whether the mystery 
of the Incarnation, and the truth that God has spoken to us 
by His own Son, be not worthy of all acceptation. If Christ 
be worthy of our adoration and love, then, though the way 
may have been long, and strange, and dark, and sometimes 
even weary, yet we may be sure that it is the right way, 
because it lias led us to Him. 

For there is this further analogy between nature and 
revelation, namely, that in each the progress is not in- 
definite, but tends to a limit. Whatever theory be adopted 
with regard to the history of the earth, we seem to see in 
its present settled condition the limit towards which every- 
thing has been moving in past geological ages ; and even if 
man has been a progressive animal, and has only gradually 
attained his present physical perfection, I presume it is not 
anticipated that the process of natural selection, or any 
other process, will carry him beyond the point which he 

has now reached. Or, if we take the divine picture of 

258 



THE GRAB UAL DE VEL OPMENT OF RE VELA TION. 

creation, we see the creative work tending from the limit of 
chaos to the limit of man ; then physics cease and religion 
begins, and we hear utterances of the voice of God 
beginning with whispers, and becoming more and more 
distinct, until we are permitted to listen to divine oracles 
uttered by human lips. Beyond this the dreams of philo- 
sophy, and the aspirations of the human heart, and the 
longings of the weary and heavy-laden cannot carry our 
thoughts or raise our desires. 

Those who are acquainted with Bishop Butler's great work 
will perceive that I have now been endeavouring — how imper- 
fectly no one knows better than myself — to apply to the ques- 
tion of " the gradual development of revelation," those prin- 
ciples of reasoning which Bishop Butler has taught us to use. 
I was very sorry to see it stated in the evidence taken before 
the select committee of the House of Lords on University 
Tests, that Bishop Butler's Analogy was " out of fashion " 
in Oxford.* I trust that the witness only intended to assert 

* Report of Evidence, 1870 : — 

Q. 376. I thought you said Bishop Butler had been excluded? — It is 
not excluded, but being an optional subject it is one that has been dis- 
couraged. 

Q. 377. Why ?— He is gone out of fashion ; I do not know why, 

Q. 378, Who makes the fashion ? — I suppose the particular set of ex- 
aminers at one time. 

Q. 379. Wliat are the works of Bishop Butler which have so gone 

out of fashion ? — The Analog)' and the Sermons were the books which 

we used to take up. 

^ 259 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

that the Analogy was not now so commonly chosen for 
examinations as formerly, for it will be an evil day for us 
all when the method of reasoning which Bishop Butler 
taught us shall be '' out of fashion " with thinking people. 
In truth, the advantage of the method is that, properly 
speaking, it never can be out of fashion ; it is like the 
method of Euclid, or that of the Differential Calculus ; it is 
an organum^ an instrument, a machine, which may be 
applied in all the varying circumstances of theological 
controversy, and to almost all religious difficulties. For the 
principle of the method is this. You find certain difficulties 
in that which professes to be a revelation of God j you 
think to get rid of these difficulties by denying the revela- 
tion ; will you succeed in doing so ? Not if you find 
precisely analogous difficulties in the course of nature ; 
unless you go further, and deny not only that there is a 
God of revelation, but a God of nature too. Nay, the 
argument carries you beyond this point, and suggests to 
you that if there be difficulties in God's natural world, and 
if He be pleased to reveal the spiritual world to us, then 
we ought to expect to find the same general method of 
proceeding in matters spiritual which we have been able to 
observe in the natural world. I quite admit that this reason- 
ing has no force for the man who says " There is no God;" 

he must be dealt with in another way ; but it has force and 

260 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATLON. 

it has comfort for the doubting inquiring soul, by assuring 
it that it can find a logical resting-place, and that the 
refuge from the misery of blank and hopeless atheism is 
to be found in simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.* 

With the atheist, I honestly confess, that I have little 
or no sympathy ; certainly I should not think it worth while 
to compose a lecture intended for his special behoof. I 
should feel disposed rather to send him for his answer to 
the fourteenth and fifty-third Psalms. The difficulty of 
supposing the framework of the universe to have had no 
architect, appears to me to be so great, so absolutely im- 
measurable, that the man who can fancy that he has got 
over it must, as I believe, either not have understood the 
difficulty, or else have deceived himself as to his power of 

* The subject of this Lecture is touched upon, but not expanded, in 
the following pregnant passage of Butler's Analogy: "The thing 
objected against this scheme of the Gospel is, that it seems to suppose 
God was reduced to the necessity of a long series of intricate means in 
order to accomplish His ends, the recovery and salvation of the world : 
in like sort as men, for want of understanding or power, not being able 
to come to their ends readily, are forced to go roundabout ways, and 
make use of many perplexed contrivances to arrive at them. Now, 
everything which we see shows the folly of this, considered as an objec- 
tion against the truth of Christianity. For, according to our manner of 
conception, God makes use of a variety of means, what we often think 
tedious ones, in the natural course of providence, for the accomplish- 
ment of all His ends. Indeed, it is certain there is somewhat in this 
matter quite beyond our comprehension : but the mystery is as great in 
nature as in Christianity." — Analogy, Part II., chap. iv. 

261 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

solving it ; anyhow, I feel that he has cut away all ground 
of argument, as between him and me. Not so the man 
whose mind is sceptically inclined. Be it ever remembered 
that the word sceptic is derived from a word v/hich means to 
look or to see — it is the same word which forms the root 
of the word bishop or overseer ; and accordingly there is 
nothing radically reproachful in the name of sceptic. It 
implies that a man is determined to look into matters for 
himself, not to trust every assertion, not to repeat a parrot 
creed ; and so far as this determination is concerned, it is 
high and noble, and is in fact the very root and spring of all 
human knowledge ; but who can wonder if looking should 
lead to doubting, and that so the name of sceptic should 
popularly imply, not the man who looks and believes, but 
the man who looks and doubts ? And I am not ashamed 
to confess that I have much sympathy with this sceptical 
fram^e of mind. Not only is it closely connected with a 
noble instinct of inquiry and search for truth which God 
has implanted in the human mind, but also, as I believe, 
it is well-nigh impossible that an inquiring mind should 
deal seriously with religious subjects and remain entirely 
free from doubt. In my opinion, the amount of scepticism 
which has, during some period of his life, occupied the 
mind of each thoughtful earnest man, will be merely a 

question of degree ; while, at the same time, I most sincerely 

262 



THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REVELATION. 

believe that scepticism ought not to be, and need not be 
the lasting condition of the human soul, and that all doubts 
may be made to vanish in the light which God has given 
to " lighten every man who is born into the world." 

I know not what may be the condition of mind of those 
to whom I have been speaking to-day. I presume the 
hope of the Christian Evidence Society is that some 
persons who feel practically the pressure of doubt and 
unbelief, will come and see whether any of their difficulties 
can be resolved by this course of Lectures, If there be 
such in this company, I beg them, in concluding this 
Lecture, to believe that they have been listening to one 
who does not wish to treat their speculative difficulties as 
trifles, but who would consider it as an unspeakable privilege 
to be able to help a doubting brother to get rid of his 
doubts, and to exchange them for the steady assurance of 
faith in tlie Lord Jesus Christ. 



263 



THE ALLEGED HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES 

OF THE 

OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS, 

AND THE 

LIGHT THROWN ON THEM BY MODERN DISCOVERIES. 

BY THE 

REV. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A., 

CAMDEN PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY, OXFORD, 



ALLEGED HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES 



OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 



In addressing you on the historical difficulties of the Old 
and New Testaments — a large subject, which it will be hard 
to treat adequately within the time allowed to me — I must 
in the first place premise, that with difficulties which lie on 
the verge or outskirts of the historic field, on the debatable 
ground between Science and History, I do not on the pre- 
sent occasion profess to deal. Questions as to the origin of 
man, whether by development or by direct creation, whe- 
ther from one pair or from more ; questions as to his pri- 
maeval condition, his possession from the first of the faculty 
of speech, his original savagery or civilisation, and the like, 
lie (I think) beyond the domain of history proper, belonging 
to what has been properly termed the '''' pre-historic period " 
of our race, and so not coming within the terms of the sub- 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



ject on which I have undertaken to speak to-day. History- 
deals with man from the time to which written records reach 
back. Historical difficulties arise from divergence, real or 
apparent, between the different accounts contained in those 
records. Now the profane records, to which any modern 
critical school would attribute an historical value, do not 
reach back within many ages of the origin of man, and thus 
no "historical difficulty" can arise with respect to these 
primitive times. It is only when we descend to an age of 
records, when the apparently authentic accounts of ancient 
countries preserved to our day can be compared with the 
Scriptural narrative that difficulty arises and that either 
agreement or disagreement can be shown. 

The first difficulty, really historical, which meets us when 
we open the volume of Scripture, is the shortness of the 
time into which all history is (or at any rate appears to be) 
compressed, by the chronological statements, especially those 
of Genesis. The exodus of the Jews is fixed by many con- 
siderations to about the fifteenth or sixteenth century before 
our era. The period between the Flood and the Exodus, 
according to the numbers of our English version, but a very 
little exceeds a thousand years. Consequently, it has been 
usual to regard Scripture as authoritatively laying it down 
that all mankind sprang from a single pair within twenty-five 

or twenty-six centuries of the Christian era, and therefore 

268 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS, 



that all history, and not only so, but all the changes by 
which the various races of men were formed, by which lan- 
guages developed into their numerous and diverse types, by 
which civilization and art emerged and gradually perfected 
themselves, are shut up within the narrow space of 2,500 
or 2,600 years before the birth of our Lord. Now this 
time is said with reason to be quite insufficient. Egypt and 
Babylonia have histories, as settled kingdoms, which reach 
back (according to the most moderate of modern critical 
historians) to about the time at which the numbers of our 
English Bible place the Deluge. Considerable diversities of 
language can be proved to have existed at that date ; mark- 
edly different physical types appear not much subsequently ; 
civilization in Egypt has, about the Pyramid period, which few 
now place later than B.C. 2,450, an advanced character; the 
arts exist nearly in the shape in which they were known in the 
country at its most flourishing period. Clearly, a consider- 
able space is wanted anterior to the pyramid age for the 
gradual development of Egyptian life into the condition 
which the monuments show to have been then reached. 
This space the numbers of our English Bible do not allow. 

Such is the difficulty. Now how is it to be met ? In the 
first place, candour should (I think) induce all those who 
urge it to let their readers, or hearers, know that a special 

uncertainty attaches to the numbers in question, from the 

269 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



fact that they are given differently in the different ancient 
versions. We possess the Pentateuch in three very ancient 
forms, in Hebrew, in the Greek version known as the Sep- 
tuagint, and in Samaritan. Our EngHsh numbers represent 
those of the Hebrew text. The- numbers of the Septuagint 
and the Samaritan version are different. Those of the 
Samaritan version extend the period between the Deluge 
and the birth of Abraham from the 292 years of the Hebrew 
text to 942 years, — an addition of six centuries and a half — 
while those of the Septuagint, according to some copies, 
give 1,072 years as the interval, according to others 1,172 
years, thus increasing the period between the Deluge and 
Abraham by a space of nearly eight, or nearly nine centuries. 
Now if the Greek, or even if the Samaritan, numbers are 
the right ones, if they represent, that is, the original text, it 
may be questioned whether anything more is wanted. It 
may be questioned whether a term of from six to eight cen- 
turies is not enough for the production of that state of things 
which we find existing in Babylonia and in Egypt when the 
light of history first dawns upon them, whether within that 
space might not have been produced such a state of civili- 
zation, so much progress in art, such differences of physical 
type, and such diversities of language as appear to have 
existed at that period. 

If, however, the ultimate verdict of calm reason, and 

270 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 

rigid scientific inquiry should be against this view, if more 
time seem to be absolutely wanted for the development of 
settled government, of art, science, language, ethnical diver- 
sities, varieties of physical type, and the like, than even the 
enlarged chronology of the Septuagint allows, then I should 
not be afraid to grant that the original record of Scripture 
on this point may have been lost, and that, as it is certain 
that we cannot possess the actual chronological scheme of 
Moses in more than one of the three extant versions of his 
words which have come to us with almost equal authority, so 
it is quite possible that we may not posses his real scheme 
in any. Nothing in ancient MSS. is so liable to corruption 
from the mistakes of copyists as the numbers ; the original 
mode of writing them appears in all countries of which we 
have any knowledge to have been by signs, not very differ- 
ent from one another; the absence of any context determining 
in favour of one number rather than another, where the copy 
is blotted or faded, increases the chance of error, and thus it 
happens that in almost all ancient works the numbers are 
found to be deserving of very little reliance. Where they 
to any extent check one another, they are generally self-con- 
tradictory ; where they do not, they are frequently in the 
highest degree improbable. 

A second historical difficulty connected with Genesis was 

much insisted upon by the late Baron Bunsen. The primi- 

271 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



tive Babylonian kingdom is declared in the tenth chapter of 
Genesis to have been Cushite. Baron Bunsen held that 
there were no Cushites out of Africa, and that " an Asiatic 
*, Cush existed only in the imagination of Biblical interpreters, 
and was the child of their despair."* But an analysis of the 
earliest documents recovered from Babylonia has shown that 
the primitive Babylonian people, that which raised the first 
structures whereof any trace remains, in the country, and 
whose buildings had gone to ruin in the days of Nebuchad- 
nezzar, was (at any rate to a large extent) Cushite, its voca- 
bulary being "undoubtedly Cushite or Ethiopian," and 
presenting numerous analogies with those of the non-Semitic 
races of modern Abyssinia. Hence, modern historical 
science, in the person of one of its best representatives, M. 
Lenormant, commences now the history of the East with a 
" First Cushite Empire," which it regards as dominant in 
Babylonia for several centuries before the earliest Semitic 
Empire arose. t 

A difficulty less noticed, yet one which was, in the state of 
our historical knowledge a few years since, more real, may be 
found in the narrative contained in the 14th chapter of Gene- 
sis with respect to the invasion of Palestine in the time of 
Abraham by a number of kings from the vicinity of the 



* Philos. of Univ. Hist. i. p. 191. 
f Manuel d'Histoire, torn, ii, p. 16. 

272 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 

Persian Gulf. These kings act under the presidency of a mon- 
arch, called Chedorlaomer (or Chedor-lagomer), who is stated 
to be " king of Elam." Now till very recently there was no 
profane evidence tliatElam — whichis not Persia, as many have 
supposed, but Elymais or Susiana, the country between Baby- 
lonia and Persia — had ever been an independent state, much 
less a powerful kingdom, and still less one that at so remote a 
date could have exercised suzerainty over so many and such 
important nations. But the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions 
have shown that throughout almost the whole of the Assy- 
rian period Elam maintained herself as an independent state 
and one of considerable military strength on the south-eastern 
borders of the empire ; and very recently'* it has further been 
discovered that, according to the Assyrian belief, an Elam- 
itic king was strong enough to invade and plunder Babylonia 
at a date, which expressed in our ordinary manner would be 
B.C. 2,286, or somewhat earlier than the time commonly 
assigned to iVbraham. Further, the primitive Babylonian 
remains bear traces of the extension of Elamitic influence 
into Babylonia at a remote era j and the possibility of such 
distant military expeditions at this far-off period of the 
world's history, receives illustration at once from the epithet 
" Ravager of Syria," which is borne by a Babylonian mon- 
arch of about this date, and also from the numerous expedi- 

* Zeitschrift f. CEgypt. Sp. Nov. 1868. 

273 18 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



tions conducted not very much later by the Egyptian princes 
from the valley of the Nile into Mesopotamia. 

No other historical difficulties, so far as I know, present 
themselves in the narrative of Genesis. Some attempts were 
made in Germany, about thirty or forty years ago, to prove 
that the description of Egypt contained in the latter portion 
of the book exhibited numerous " mistakes and inaccura- 
cies ; " but the " mistakes and inaccuracies " alleged were 
scarcely of an historical character, and the writers who alleged 
them have been so triumphantly refuted by Hengstenberg, 
and others, that the sceptical school has ceased to urge the 
point, and now allows the entire truthfulness and accuracy 
of the whole account. Few things are in truth more remark- 
able than the complete harmony and accordance which exist 
between the picture of ancient Egypt and the ancient Egyp- 
tians, as drawn for us by Moses, and that portraiture of 
them which is now obtainable from their own contemporary 
writings and monuments. 

With regard to the narrative contained in the last four 
books of the Pentateuch, modern criticism has chiefly em- 
ployed itself in objections turning upon the numbers. The 
multiplication of the Israelites, as related in Genesis and 
Exodus, has been declared to be utterly and absolutely incre- 
dible. The sudden exodus from Egypt of a body of two 

minions of persons in the way narrated has been pronounced 

274 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 



an impossibility. The subsistence of such a multitude, with 
their flocks and herds, in the Desert of Tih for forty years, or 
even a single year, has been said to be inconceivable. Many 
minor objections, turning on the same point of numerical 
difficulty, have been urged, and the conclusion has been 
drawn that the entire narrative of Exodus, Numbers, Le- 
viticus, and Deuteronomy is unhistorical — a romance drawn 
up at a comparatively late period of the nation's history, 
having perhaps a certain historic foundation, but in its 
details wholly and entirely imaginary.* 

Now, with respect to these objections, let it be observed, 
in the first place, that they all turn upon the one point of 
number j and that the numbers of the sacred texts are (as has 
been already observed) exactly the part of it which is most 
liable to corruption and least to be depended upon. So 
that if the difficulties of the multiplication, as stated, of the 
exit from Egypt, the march, the passage of the Red Sea, 
and the sojourn in the mlderness, were all allowed to be as 
great as represented, it would be enough to reply that 
there may have been a corruption of the numbers — the 
addition (say) of a cipher in each case — and that the whole 
narrative would stand good, and the difficulties disappear, if 
for " six hundred thousand that were men " in Exodus xii. 37, 
we were to read 60,000, and so on — the entire exodus beino- 

* Colenso. *' The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua." 

275 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



thus made one of 200,000 instead of two million souls. But 
this mode of meeting the difhculty is not, perhaps, here the 
right one. The numbers may be defended as they stand. 
In Germany the best critics, including so subtle and little 
credulous a writer as Ewald, accept them. They seem 
required by the general tenor of the whole narrative, es- 
pecially by the great unwillingness of the Egyptians to let the 
people go, and by their power, within little more than a 
generation to conquer and occupy Canaan. Assuming 
therefore the numbers to be sound, to have come to us 
as they were delivered by Moses, let us inquire what the 
great difficulties are of which so much has been made, and 
see if they are really so insuperable. 

In the first place, as to the multiplication in Egypt. Now 
here, before we can form any judgment, two things have to 
be determined — "What was the number of the Israelites 
when they entered Egypt," and "What was the duration of 
their stay there ? " What was their number when they 
entered Egypt ? We are commonly told, "seventy souls." 
Now, no doubt, these words occur in Scripture, " All the 
souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were 
threescore and ten."* But, when we come to look into 
details, we find first, that the seventy souls of Jacob's descen- 
dants comprise only two women, the married daughters and 
* Gen. xlvi. 27 ; compare Ex. i. 5. 
276 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 



grand-daughters of Jacob not being mentioned, who yet, we 
are told, followed the migrations of the tribe,* and no ac- 
count being taken of the wives of his sons and grandsons. 
Supplying these omissions, we have for the family of Jacob 
as it entered Egypt, the number 267, instead of the number 
seventy, or nearly four times the ordinary estimate. But 
this is far from being all. The children of Israel entered 
Egypt with their households, or retainers.! What the size 
of a patriarchal household was we may gather from the 
history of Abraham, who had 318 trained servants born in 
his house, capable of active military service. It has been 
well observed that " we shall scarcely find so many in a 
clan of three thousand souls." J Jacob's retainers are likely 
to have been more numerous rather than less numer- 
ous than those of Abraham ; and the conclusion of Kurtz, 
that they amounted to " several thousands " § is therefore 
perfectly reasonable. It appears to me quite probable that 
the tribe which took possession of the Land of Goshen on the 
invitation of Joseph and Pharaoh was a body of five or six 
thousand persons. 

Next, as to the duration of the sojourn in Egypt, the 

* Gen. xlvi. 7. 

+ Gen. xlvi. 5, The word taph ()?1^} here, translated "little ones" 
means *' households." The Septuagint translate it by qIkIo. or aMy^kvuo^ 
\ Payne Smith, " Bampton Lectures." p. 89. 
§ History of Old Covenant, vol. ii. p. 149. E. T, 

277 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



Hebrew text lays it down very positively that it was 430 
years.* The best MSS. of the Septuagint agree. There was 
a tradition among the later Jews which brought down the 
term to 2 1 5 years ; but this tradition cannot reasonably be 
set against the plain words of Exodus ; and consequently 
we must take 430 years as the duration of the sojourn. 

Is it then, or is it not, conceivable, that under the circum- 
stances of the time and country, a tribe or clan of 5,000 
persons may have increased in 430 years to one of two 
millions ? Here it has to be remembered that there were 
tvv^o modes whereby they might increase, one that of ordinary 
natural increase, the other by augmentation of the number 
of their retainers. The natural tendency of population has 
been shown by Mr. Mai thus, to be to double itself, if 
unchecked, every 25 years. t The Israelites, having the 
land of Goshen, a large fertile territory, capable of support- 
ing a population of several millions, assigned them, would 
be in a position where the -checks on the natural tendency, 
especially at first, would be very slight. Now, according to 
the estimate of Mr. Malthus, a body of 5,000 persons increas- 
ing without check, would have become more than two 
millions at the end of 225 j^ears ; a body of 267 persons 
would have exceeded the same amount at the close of 325 

* Ex. xii. 40, 41. 

t Essay on Population, vol. i, p. 8 ; Encycl. Brit. vol. xviii. p. 340, 

278 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTA AIE NTS. 

years; and a body even of seventy persons would have 
done the same at the expiration of 375 years; so that, 
except for the operation of artificial checks, the family of 
Jacob, had it really consisted of seventy persons only, would 
have become one of above two millions fifty-five years before 
the time of the exodus. But, no doubt, as the increase took 
place, the artificial checks, which keep down the natural 
tendency of population, began to operate, and the result 
was, that if the original immigrants were, as I have supposed, 
about 5,000, the actual rate of increase had been a doubling, 
not once each twenty-five years, but once each forty-eight 
years, or not very much beyond the rate which prevails in 
our own country at the present time. 

If we add to this the consideration that the Israelites, 
being in a very flourishing condition during the earlier por- 
tion of their sojourn in Egypt, would naturally augment, by 
purchase, the number of their households, and might even 
receive, by agreement, whole tribes into their body, we shall 
not be surprised that at the end of the 430 years, the clan 
had grown to be a nation of two million souls. 

With respect to the difficulties of the exit of this large 

body of persons from Egypt in the sudden way which 

the narrative in Exodus seems to describe, they depend (I 

think) mainly on the broad and general manner of description 

habitual to Oriental writers, who do not trouble themselves 

279 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



with details, or with exceptions, but describe in the mass^ 
stating that to be done by all which was done by most, or 
by those of most account; regarding a nation as concentrated 
in its heads ; and directing attention to the main events, to the 
neglect of the various details into which they were broken 
up. A candid reader, making fair allowance for these cha- 
racteristics of Oriental style, and for the brevity of the sacred 
narrative, will scarcely be much troubled by the difficulties 
of the start and the march, as they have been urged by some 
critics. It is certain migrations of tribes, quite as large as 
that of Israel is said to have been, have from time to time 
taken place in the east, and indeed in the west also. Such 
migrations have frequently been sudden — the emigrants 
have started off with their women, children, and all their 
possessions on a certain day* — they have traversed enormous 
distances, much greater ones than the Israelites traversed, 
and have finally settled themselves in new abodes. That 
the Israelites made such a migration there cannot be a 
doubt. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, all accepted the 
fact as certain. Cavils as to their exact numbers, or as to 
the particular expressions used in Exodus, do not touch the 

* It was on the 5th of January, 1 771, the day appointed by the high 
priests, that Oubacha began his march, with seventy thousand families. 
Most of the hordes were then assembled in the steppes, on the left bank 
of the Volga, and the whole multitude followed him. " — Hommaire de 
HeU, Travels, p. 227, E. T. 

280 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



main fact, but show (if they show anything) either that our 
ancient manuscripts are here and there defective, or that an 
early Oriental historian does not write in the exact and ac- 
curate style of a nineteenth-century occidental critic. 

The difficulty which attaches to the subsistence of the 
Israelites for forty years in the wilderness of Tih, concerns 
almost wholly the sustenance of their flocks and herds, which 
are said to have been numerous, and have been calculated 
at two million head of cattle. The answer to this difficulty 
may be very brief In the first place, we are not told that 
the cattle did not very rapidly decrease ; for no mention is 
made of the people possessing any considerable number in 
the later portion of the sojourn, until an enormous booty is 
captured from the Midianites ; * and in the second place, 
there is ample reason to believe that the wilderness was 
anciently very much more fertile than it is at present, and 
quite capable of furnishing pasturage to flocks and herds of 
a large size. The recent explorations of Mr, Tristram and 
Mr. Holland have placed this fact beyond a doubt, and have 
shown that the Sinaitic peninsula, at any rate, was a "desert" 
merely in comparison with the richly agricultural countries of 
Egypt and Palestine. 

Historical difficulties are scarcely alleged with respect to 
the portion of the Biblical narrative which follows upon the 

* Num. xxxi. 32, 33. 
281 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



sojourn in the wilderness. The conquest of Canaan by the 
immigrant Israentes is a fact too well attested to be denied ; 
and the subsequent chequered history of the race, as delivered 
to us in Judges and in the First Book of Samuel, is for the most 
part too modest and unpretending an account to tempt the 
assaults of sceptics. The exploits of Gideon and Samson are 
viewed indeed with incredulity ; but merely on the ground 
that they are intrinsically improbable. It is not until we 
come to the time of David and Solomon that any further 
difficulties, really of an historical character, present them- 
selves, and that an examination of the difficulties by the 
light of historical documents becomes possible. 

The sudden rise of the Israelites to power and greatness 
in the reign of David, the grandeur, magnificence, and 
extent of the kingdom of Solomon, and the entire collapse 
of the empire at his death appear to some, not merely in 
themselves strange and improbable, but incompatible with 
what is known from history of the condition of the neigh- 
bouring countries. The little country of Palestine was 
placed midway between the territories of two great and 
powerful monarchies, of which it may be said, in a general 
way, that for a thousand years before the rise of the Persians 
to power, they contested the sovereignty of the East. Over- 
shadowed by the grand forms of Egypt and Assyria, how 
could Israel (it may be asked) emerge from obscurity, how 

282 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS, 

especially advance at a bound from a dependent to a dominant 
position, asserting, and for above fifty years maintaining, her 
place am.ong the great ones of the earth ? We may answer, 
that, in the first place such a revolution has numerous 
analogies in the history of the East, where the rapid rise of 
petty states to greatness, the sudden conversion of an op- 
pressed into a dominant power, is the rule rather than the 
exception; where Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, where 
the histories of Timur, Yenghis Khan, Nadir Shah, all illus- 
trate it. But further, in this particular case, we can see 
not only a general analogy, but a fitness in the peculiar cir- 
cumstances of the time for the production of such a pheno- 
menon as that which Scripture places before us. The 
monumental evidence of the two countries shows, that 
exactly at the time when the conquests of David and the 
Empire of Solomon are placed, both Egypt and Assyria 
wTre exceptionally weak. Egypt, after the time of Ramesses 
III. (ab. B.C. 1,200). ceased to be aggressive on the side of 
Syria, and continued until the accession of Sheshonk or 
Shishak, (ab. B.C. 990) to be a quiet and unwarlike power. 
Assyria, which, about B.C. 1,100, extended her sway into the 
valley of the Orontes, and threatened Palestine with sub- 
jection, passed under a cloud soon afterwards, and did not 
again become a terror to Syria, till about B.C. 880. For a 
Jewish Empire to arise it was necessary that Egypt and 

283 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



Assyria should be simultaneously weak. Such simultaneous 
weakness is found for the hundred or hundred and twenty 
years between B.C. i,ioo and B.C. 990. And exactly into 
this interval fall the rise of the Jews to power under Saul 
and David, and the establishment of their empire under 
Solomon. 

Doubts were thrown a few years since, by an able writer, 
on the expeditions of Shishak against Rehoboam, Solomon's 
son, and of Zerah, the Ethiopian, against Asa, Rehoboam' s 
grandson ;* which, it was suggested, might be mere em- 
bellishments of a history, otherwise tame and uninteresting. 
The careful analysis which the inscription of Shishak at 
Karnac has undergone at the hands of Mr. Stuart Poole,''^ 
and Dr. Brugsch,t not to mention other scholars, and the 
evidence thus furnished of the reality and the importance of 
his expedition into Palestine, render the continuance of 
incredulity, as to the former of these attacks, impossible. 
The analysis has thrown a flood of light on what was pre- 
viously obscure in the scriptural narrative. It has shown 
that Shishak went up, not so much with any extensive 
scheme of conquest, as to settle ]i\?, protege, Jeroboam, in his 
kingdom, where he was in great danger from the Levitical 

* F. Newman's ** Hebrew Monarchy," pp. 160, 161. 

f "Dictionary of the Bible," ad voc. Shishak. 

X ** Geographische Inschriften," vol. ii., p. 32, et seq, 

284 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 

and Canaanite towns not being in his hands. These Shishak 
reduced and made over to Jeroboam, thus giving him a firm 
hold on the northern kingdom. Having done this, he was 
content to receive the mere submission of Rehoboam, and 
allowed him to retain the southern kingdom, perhaps not 
wishing to make Jeroboam too strong. It was the constant 
practice of the great monarchs of Eg}qDt, Assyria, and Baby- 
lon, to maintain, on dependent thrones, a large number of 
petty princes, who were checks upon each other, and could 
easily be dealt with, if they shewed any inclination to rebellion. 

The expedition of Zerah has not yet received any distinct 
confirmation from monuments. But the recent discovery 
that there reigned about this time a king called Azerch- 
Amen in Ethiopia, has removed the difficulties which attached 
to the name and the description of the invader, and has 
indicated to the dispassionate and candid student, that here, 
too, the Jewish historian had probably contemporary records 
to guide him, and related real facts of history, not figments 
drawn from his imagination. 

A real historical difficulty meets us soon after this, in the 
sacred narrative, in the invasion of the kingdom of Samaria, 
by Pul, who is called a " king of Assyria," and is said to 
have put Menahem to a tribute of a thousand talents of 
silver.'^ V/e possess the history of Assyria for this period, 

* 2 Kings XV. 19. 
285 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



apparently in a state of completeness; and this history 
shows us no monarch at this time (or indeed at any other 
time), bearing a name in the least resembling that of Pul. 
The predecessor of Tiglath-pileser on the throne of Ass)n:ia, 
was a certain Asshur-lush (or Asshur-likkis), whose pre- 
decessor was Asshur-dayan, who followed on Shalmaneser 
III. It seems impossible that any one of these kings can 
be Pul. Moreover, Assyria, in the time immediately pre- 
ceding the accession of Tiglath-pileser, instead of being a 
great, aggressive power, capable of marching armies into 
Palestine, was in a depressed state, troubled by frequent 
insurrections among her own subjects, and quite incapable 
of sending out distant military expeditions. Thus " Pul, 
king of Assyria," constitutes to the modern historical 
inquirer a real difficulty — a difficulty which it has been 
proposed to meet in various ways. 

The best explanation hitherto suggested is, I think, the 
following. Pul, who was called by Berosus, the great Babylon 
historian, "king of the Chaldeans," was probably a monarch 
who reigned at Babylon, while Assur-lush was reigning at 
Nineveh. In the troublous decade of years which preceded 
Tiglath-pileser's accession, he became a powerful prince, 
perhaps deprived Assyria of her western provinces, and 
invaded Syria and Palestine from the quarter from which 
Assyrian invasions had been wont to come. Presenting him- 

285 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 

self to the Israelites as the representative of the great Meso- 
potamian power, with which thfey had been contending for 
centuries, they termed him loosely ^" king of Assyria" when 
he was in reality a king of Babylon, who had possessed 
himself of a portion of the Assyrian dominions. In the 
same way, they subsequently termed Nabopolassar, the 
father of Nebuchadnezzar, and even Darius Hystaspis, 
"kings of Assyria." * 

A difficulty used to be felt with respect to " Sargon, king 
of Assyria," who is said to have taken Ashdod by the hand 
of one of his captains.f Sargon's name is not contained in 
the historical books of Scripture, nor is he mentioned by 
any of the classical writers, who speak of Shalmaneser, 
Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. The occurrence of his name 
in Isaiah was thought to indicate an irreconcilable difference 
between the historical data possessed by that prophet and 
those of the writer of Kings. Even his existence was 
doubted, and different writers proposed to regard his name 
as a mere variant for those of each of the three princes just 
mentioned. The Assyrian inscriptions have completely 
cleared up all this obscurity. Sargon is found to have been 
the successor of Shalmaneser j the predecessor and father of 
Sennacherib. He speaks of having captured Ashdod. All 
that Isaiah says of him is confirmed ; and it appears to have 
* 2 Kings xxiii. 29 ; Ezra vi. 22. -(■ Isaiah xx. i. 

287 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



been quite accidental that the writer of Kings, who more 
than once alludes to him,* does not me^ition his name. 

The strictly historical character of the later portion of the 
Old Testament narrative, especially of that delivered to us 
in Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, and in the con- 
temporary prophets, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and Haggai, is 
generally admitted, even by sceptics. The only writings 
belonging to this period, whereto exception is taken are the 
Books of Daniel and Esther, which many still regard as full 
of historical inaccuracies, and as quite unworthy of credence. 
I shall therefore conclude my observation on the alleged 
historical difficulties of the Old Testament, and the light 
thrown on them by modern discoveries, by a brief consider- 
ation of these two books and of the objections taken to 
them. 

The chief historical inaccuracies alleged against Daniel 
are the following : He is said to have invented two kings, 
Belshazzar, and Darius the Mede, whose existence is not 
merely unknown to history, but precluded by it ; to have 
falsely ascribed a government by satraps to the Babylonians ; 
to have incorrectly represented the condition of their " wise 
men " ; to have made Susa a residence of the Persian mon- 
archs when it was not even built \ to have wrongly made the 
last king of Babylon a son of Nebuchadnezzar, and to have 
• 2 Kings xvii. 6 ; x\iii. 7, ii. 
2S8 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 



misrepresented his fate ; to have misconceived the relative 
position of the Me^des and Persians at the time of the cap- 
ture of Babylon ; and to have related an utterly incredible 
circumstance, viz. that Daniel was admitted among the 
Babylonian "wise men," and even constituted their head.* 

Now of these charges some are quite incapable of being 
either substantiated or distinctly refuted from our insuffi- 
cient knowledge of the times to which they refer. Nothing 
is really known of the classes into which the " wise men" 
of Babylon were divided in Nebuchadnezzar's time, except- 
ing what we learn from Daniel himself The authors sup- 
posed to contradict Daniel on this point, write of the state 
of things in their own day, which happens to be eight cen- 
turies later ! And they do not write about the Babylonian 
"wise men" at all, but about the divisions of the Persian 
magi, an entirely different class. We do not even know 
enough about the " wise men " to say whether there was 
anything strange and unusual in a foreigner being placed 
at their head. We may suspect that it was so, but we have 
really no sufficient evidence on the subject. The litde 
evidence that we have is to the effect that the " wise men " 
were a learned, not a priestly, body ; and that they admitted 

* Von Lengerke, "Das Buch Daniel; Einleitung, " § 13; p. Ixiii. "De 
Wette, Einleitung in d. Abte Testament," p. 225, a; Davison, "Intro- 
duction to the Old Testament," vol. iii. pp. 174-192. 

289 19 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



foreigners among them — more we do not know ; but there is 
certainly not the slightest difficulty in supposing that the 
despotic power of a Babylonian monarch would have been 
amply sufficient to overcome any repugnance which any 
class of his subjects might have felt towards one of his ap- 
pointments. 

Similarly, we have no sufficient knowledge of the Baby- 
lonian governmental system to say that it was not, at any 
rate, to some extent, satrapial. A satrapial system is simply 
one in which governors are appointed over the provinces, 
instead of their being suffered to remain under the rule of 
native kings. Our present Indian system is in part satrapial, 
in part a government by means of kings. The Assyrian 
government was one of the same kind; and, on the whole, it 
is most probable that so was the Babylonian. Gedaliah, 
who succeeded to King Zedekiah in Judea, was a "governor,"* 
that is, a satrap, appointed by Nebuchadnezzar; and Berosus 
speaks of a " satrap of Egypt, Coele-Syria, and Phoenicia," as 
holding office under Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar's father. 
Thus there is no "inaccuracy" in Daniel's speaking of 
Nebuchadnezzar as summoning, among his other great 
officers, his " satraps, "t That the word^ which is Persian, 

* 2 Kings XXV. 23. 

f Dan. iii. 2. J^^^^llti^rii^' translated in our version, ** princes," 

but really the Hebrew equivalent of the V&c^x^xs.khshatrapa^ "satraps." 

290 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 



was not used in Babylonia is probable ; but Daniel, writing 
for Jews under Persian government, who were perfectly- 
familiar with the term, employed it for a corresponding 
Babylonian expression. 

The charge that Daniel misapprehended the relative 
position of the Medes and Persians at the capture of 
Babylon, regarding the supremacy of the Medes as still 
continuing, is unjust, and rests on an omission to look care- 
fully to the original text. It is true that the Medes are 
placed before the Persians in the words of the handwriting 
upon the wall, and also in the formula, " according to the 
law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not." But 
this honorary precedence assigned to the Medes is a mere 
trace of their ancient supremacy — a trace much more strongly 
marked in Greek writers, who actually call Cyrus and his 
successors " Medes " — and is not an indication of its con- 
tinuance. Daniel twice marks very strongly the subordinate 
position of the Medes, stating in one place'* that Darius the 
Mede ^^ received \hQ kingdom" — 2>.,was given it by another; 
and further declaring that he ^^was made king over the 
nation of the Chaldaeans,"! using in this case an expression 
which distinctly implies that he derived his position from 
some superior authority, which made him king. % 

* Dan. V. 31. f Dan. ix, i. 

X See Pusey's "Lectures on Daniel," pp. 124, 125. 3rd edition. 

291 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



The notion that Susa, or at any rate, its palace, was not 
built at the time when Daniel says that he saw himself in 
vision there, rests wholly upon a statement made by Pliny, 
six hundred years later, that " Susa, the ancient regal city of 
the Persians, was built by Darius Hystaspis."* Now this 
statement, one of very weak authority, had we nothing 
to set against it, is contrary to the declarations of various 
other classical authorities, among them notably of Herodotus; 
and is completely disproved by the Assyrian inscriptions, 
which show that Susa was one of the most ancient of all the 
Mesopotamian cities, and that its ''palace" was famous for 
many centuries before the time of Daniel. The truth which 
underlies Pliny's statement, is the fact that Darius Hystaspis 
was the first Persian monarch to build a palace at Susa 
after the Persian fashion ; but the ancient residence of the 
Susian kings, the Memnonium, as the Greeks called it, had 
existed for considerably more than a thousand years when 
the son of Hystaspes began his edifice. 

Of the tw^o remaining charges, which concern Darius the 

Mede, and Belshazzar, one — and that the more important 

of the two — has been completely rebutted by the evidence 

of the Babylonian monuments. These monuments show 

that Nabonnedus (or Labynetus), the king of Babylon 

attacked by Cyrus, had a son named Bel-shar-ezer, or Bel- 

• H. N. vi. 27. 
292 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 



shazzar, whom during some years he associated with him in 
the government. This son may well have been on the 
mother's side descended from Nebuchadnezzar, as Daniel 
says that Belshazzar was;^' he may have played the part in 
the siege which Daniel states that he did, while his father 
(as Berosus mentioned) defended the fortress of Borsippa ; 
and he may have fallen in the general massacre during the 
night in which Babylon was taken, while his father was 
subsequently made prisoner, and kindly treated by Cyrus. 
All the supposed contradictions of profane history by Daniel 
in connection with this matter, are entirely removed by one 
little document, exhumed in our own day from the soil of 
Mesopotamia, by the exertions of an English gentleman. 

With respect to Darius the Mede, nothing has been as 
yet discovered. It is clear from Daniel that he was not a 
king in his own right, but a viceroy set up by Cyrus. He 
held his government probably for not more than two years. 
Perhaps he is to be identified with Astyages, the Median 
king, whom Cyrus deposed but treated kindly ; perhaps he 
was merely a Median noble, whom Cyrus advanced, as he 
did other Medes, to a position of trust and importance. 
The monuments have not at present thrown any light on 
this matter ; but he would be a bold person, who, after the 
discovery with respect to Belshazzar, would undertake to 

* Dan. V. II. 
293 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



say that there may not, ere many years are past, be as much 
hght thrown upon the obscure history of this mouarch, as 
has been recently thrown on the history, formerly at least 
as obscure, of his predecessor. 

I cannot leave this matter and turn to another without 
strongly advising those who have any doubts as to the 
genuineness and authenticity of the Book of Daniel, which 
have been of late so fiercely attacked, to study carefully the 
recent work of Professor Pusey upon the subject. They 
will find in it a complete answer to all the objections, histo- 
rical, and critical, which have been urged against this portion 
of Scripture. 

The historical difficulties alleged against the Book of 
Esther, are chiefly the following. Assuming Ahasuerus to 
be Xerxes, which is no doubt a highly probable identification, 
it is said that Esther's position is impossible, since Xerxes 
had but one wife, iVmestris, who cannot be Esther. Nor 
could any Persian king have married a Jewess, since there 
was a law that the kings should take all their wives out of 
seven noble Persian families. Such a feast as that described 
in the first chapter, where all the princes of the provinces 
were entertained for i8o days, could not have taken place, 
since the governors could not without ruin to the empire 
have been so long absent from their governments. It is 
incredible that a Persian king should have given the com- 

294 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 

mand, said to have been given by Ahasuerus to Vashti. 
The edicts ascribed to Ahasuerus are all incredible — especially 
the second and third. No king would have consented to the 
murder of 2,000,000 of his subjects ; nor would any king ever 
have allowed at a later time those two millions to stand up 
and slay as many as they pleased of their enemies. Finally, 
the honours granted to Mordecai are said to be excessive, 
and such as no monarch would have allowed to a subject. 

With respect to the first of these objections, we may reply 
that though Amestris cannot be Esther, she may well be 
Vashti j and that though the classical writers tell us of no 
other v/ife of Xerxes, yet it is quite possible that he may 
have had several. Polygamy was the rule with the Persian 
kings. Amestris was no doubt on the whole the chief wife of 
Xerxes, and if she at one time fell into disgrace, must have 
been afterwards restored to favour ; but the accounts which 
we have from the Greeks do not at all preclude the possi- 
bility of such a temporary disgrace, and of the elevation of 
another wife to the first place for a time. As to its being 
impossible that any Persian king could have married a 
Jewess, it is sufficient to remark, that though the Persians 
had laws, the Persian kings were above the law, and could 
always disregard its restraints. When Cambyses having 
conceived an affection for his full sister, Atossa, asked the 
royal judges if they could find a law allowing a Persian to 

29s 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



marry such a near relative, their reply was, that they could 
find no law permitting the marriage of brothers and sisters, 
but that they found a law, that the king of the Persians might 
do what he liked.* 

The objection to Xerxes feasting ^// his princes for i8o 
days is an objection, not to anything contained in the Book 
of Esther, but to something which the critic who makes it 
has intruded into the book. The writer of the book tells 
us that Xerxes " m.ade a feast to all his princes and his ser- 
vants" (ch. i. 3), and subsequently relates that the feast lasted 
" an hundred and fourscore days" (verse 4); but he no- 
where states that the princes were all present during the 
whole of the time. Indeed, the reader possessed of com- 
mon sense sees clearly enough that the very duration of the 
festivity was probably contrived, in order that all the princes 
might in their turn partake of it, Tlie critic says, " it is not 
so stated in the text," which is true : but neither is that 
stated which he has thought that he saw in it. 

The command given to Vashti is undoubtedly strange 

and abnormal. It was an outrage on Oriental custom ; and 

as such the narrative sets it before us. The king does not 

issue the order until he is " merry with wine " j and the 

Queen refuses to obey, because she feels the order to be an 

insult. But can we say that no Oriental king could possibly 

* Herod, iii. 31. 
296 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 

have issued such a command ? Is it not more reasonable 
to allow, with a German critic of the sceptical school, that 
the narrative is here " possible on account of the advancing 
corruption in Xerxes' time, and through the folly of Xerxes 
himself"?* Indeed is it not clear that we can set no limit 
to the caprices of absolute power, or to the orders that ma}^ 
not be issued by a proud and silly despot ? 

Considerations of this kind go far also to remove the diffi- 
culty which has been felt as to the main facts of the narra- 
tive of Esther, the intended massacre of the Jews, and the 
counter-edict allowing them to defend themselves and slay 
their enemies. Such facts are altogether out of the ordinary 
experience of Western nations ; and it is not surprising that 
they have been met with incredulity on the part of those 
whose knowledge of the past is limited to an acquaintance 
with the course of Europeanj and. especially of modern 
European, history. But can it be said that they are alto- 
gether out of nature ? that they have no counterpart in the 
history of the East? that they transcend altogether what 
authentic history relates of the doings of Oriental tyrants ? 
Here again the German sceptic is more cautious than some 
of those who have sought to popularise him, and allows that 
from what|We know of the base character and despotism of 
Xerxes it may perhaps be believed that Haman obtained from 
* De Wette, **Eiiileitung," p. 267. 
297 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



him a decree for the extirpation of the Jews, and Mordecai 
in return a corresponding counter-decree*. All that he ob- 
jects to is, the fierceness with which the Jews set to work, 
and the consequent massacre by them of above 75,000 per- 
sons. This fact he thinks "incredible." It maybe allowed 
that had the persons slain been, as the objectors suppose, 
"Persians," the circumstances related w^ould have been 
extremely hard of belief; but it is on the whole most pro- 
bable that there were few or no " Persians " among them. 
A religious sympathy united the Persians with the Jews ; 
and it is scarcely likely that any of them would have taken 
part in the proposed destruction of the Jewish nation. The 
adversaries of the Jews were to be found in the ranks of the 
conquered nations, not of the conquering one. They were 
Persian subjects, not Persians. There is no reason to think 
that the loss even of 75,000 of such persons would have 
been felt by Xerxes as a matter of much importance. We 
must remember, however, that the number 75,000 is doubtful. 
The Septuagint version has 15,000; and this number is 
more in harmony than the other with the 800 slain in the 
capital. 

Finally, to the objection that the honours granted to 
Mordecai are excessive, it may be replied, in the first place, 
that they are analogous to those granted to Joseph,t and 
* Ibid. loc. cit. t Gen. xli, 42, 43. 

298 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 



Daniel,"'^ and therefore such as were occasionally allowed 
to subjects by Oriental sovereigns; and secondly, that if 
there were anything abnormal in them, it would be suffi- 
ciently accounted for by the wild and extravagant temper of 
Xerxes, which delighted in strange acts and exhibitions of 
an unusual character. Haman, who knew his master's 
weakness, might well speculate upon it, and suggest extraor- 
dinary honours, since he imagined that it was himself for 
whom they were intended. 

I have now noticed all the historical difficulties of any 
force or weight, which have come before me in the course 
of my studies on the history of the Old Testament. I have 
dwelt particularly on those connected with the Pentateuch 
and with the two Books of Daniel and Esther, because of 
late years the attacks of sceptics have been especially directed 
against those portions of the Sacred volume. I have left 
myself but scant time for noticing historical difficulties con- 
nected with the narrative of the New Testament ; but this 
is of the less consequence, since there are no more than one 
or two such difficulties on which any stress has recently 
been laid by our opponents. 

It has been said that St. Luke, in connecting the name of 
Cyrenius with the " taxing " which caused Joseph and Mary 
to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem, "undeniably contradicts 

* Dan, V. 29. 

299 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES CF 



history.'"^ Cyrenius (or Quirlnus) was appointed governor 
of Syria about ten years after the death of Herod the Great, 
and made a census of his province shortly aftenvards. This 
census St. Luke is accused of placing ten years too early. 
The answer to this charge is, that the words of St. Luke 
(chap. ii. 2) cannot possibly mean that Cyrenius was governor 
at the time of the taxing ; had it been St. Luke's intention 
to express this, the verse would have run thus : " This tax- 
ing was made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria," and 
not *' this taxing was first made," etc. " First," that is, which 
is manifestly the emphatic word of the sentence, would then 
have been absent from it. Evidently, therefore, St. Luke's 
words must bear some other meaning. They may signify, 
"fAts taxing was made l>e/ore Cyrenius was governor," and so 
before that better known taxing which he ordered. This is 
an allowable translation of the passage. Or they may mean, 
and I think they do mean, *' this taxing was first completed 
— first took full effect — when Cyrenius was governor ; " that 
is to say, the taxing ordered by Augustus, and commenced 
under Herod the Great, was interrupted (as it may easily 
have been, since the Jews were very bitter against it), and 
the business was first accomplished under Cyrenius. This is 
a sense which the Greek verb translated in our version " was 
made " sometimes has. 

* Strauss, "Leben Jesu," § 32. 
30Q 



■ THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 

Again, it has been said that St. Luke erred in stating that 
Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene (iii. i) in the fifteenth year 
of the reign of Tiberius Caesar."* Lysanias, it is said, died 
sixty years previously ; and St. Luke has ignorantly made 
him alive, being deceived by the fact that Abilene continued 
to be called " the Abilene of Lysanias," after its former 
ruler, for sixty or seventy years subsequently. Now here 
it is in the first place assumed, without any word of 
proof, that the Lysanias who died B.C. 34 once ruled over 
Abilene. Secondly, it is assumed, also without any word of 
proof, that Abilene came to be known as " the Abilene of 
Lysanias," from him. I venture to assert that there is abso- 
lutely no gi-ound for believing that the old Lysanias was ever 
ruler of Abilene ; and I venture to maintain that Abilene 
came to be called " the Abilene of Lysanias " from a second 
or later Lysanias, a son of the former one, who is the person 
intended by St. Luke. Till recently. Christian apologists 
were defied to show historically that there was ever more 
than one Lysanias, and were accused of inventing a second 
to escape a difficulty. But a few years since, a discovery 
was made which must be regarded by all reasonable persons 
as having set the whole matter at rest. This was an inscrip- 
tion found near Baalbek, f containing a dedication of a 

* Strauss, "Leben Jesu," § 44. 

f See Krafift, "Topografie Jerusalems," Icscr. 29. 

301 



HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF 



memorial tablet or statue to " Zenodoms, son of the tetrarch 
Lysanias, and to Lysanias, her children," by (apparently) the 
widow of the first, and the mother of the second Lysanias. 
Zenodorus was already known as having succeeded the first 
Lysanias in his government. It is thus clear, that there were, 
as previously suspected, two persons of the name, a father, 
and a son, and there is not the slightest reason for doubting 
St. Luke's statement that the latter was tetrarch of Abilene 
in the fifteenth of Tiberius. 

I know of no other cavil against the historical accuracy 
of the New Testament, that I can regard as worthy of 
being dignified with the name of difficulty. It has been 
denied that any decree ever went out from Caesar Augustus, 
that all the world should be taxed,* but as Savigny, the 
best authority on Roman antiquities, holds the contrary to 
be certain, this denial need not detain us. It has been 
asserted that if the massacre of the Innocents had taken 
place, it mtis^ have been noticed by Josephus ;f but this 
argument from omission is too weak to deserve more than 
a passing notice. Nothing is more familiar to historical 
students than the unaccountable omissions which occur in 
the works of almost all historians. Scepticism has searched 
in the most minute and unsparing way every detail of the 
Gospel and the Acts, and has endeavoured earnestly to find 

* Strauss, L. J. § 32. f Ibid. § 34. 

302 



THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 



"differences" and "divergences" between these facts and 
those of profane history j but again and again has it been 
compelled to own that the divergences are slight, and the 
differences such as may be reconciled by natural and 
probable suppositions. The entire result of the searching 
criticism, whereto the historical character of the New 
Testament has been exposed, has been to show that not only 
the general narrative, but all its minutiae, are trustworthy. 
No evangelist has been convicted of error in respect of any 
historical statements. Where a shallow learning and a 
defective knowledge of the records of the past have led men 
to think that they had found a slip or a mistake, and a 
shout of triumph has been raised, profounder research has 
always demonstrated the veracity and accuracy of the 
sacred writer, and has exposed the ignorance of his assailant. 
The historical character of the New Testament is, I think 
I may say, in the eyes of all sober historical critics 
estabhshed. 



303 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

BY THE 

REV. CHARLES ROW, M.A., 

OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD. 



20 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 



It is hardly possible to over-estimate the importance of the 
issues to which it will be my duty to address myself in this 
lecture. They involve the central position of Christianity ; 
viz., the all-important question whether Jesus Christ was an 
historical person, or a creation of the imagination. Is the 
Church which is erected on Him founded on an historic 
fact, which had an objective existence ; or is the Jesus of the 
Evangelists a subjective creation which existed only in the 
minds of its originators ? 

Many of the attacks which have been made on Revelation 
are directed against its outworks merely ; this is one directed 
against the very key of the Christian position. If it can be 
carried by our opponents, the whole line of our defences 
becomes untenable. Let us not deceive ourselves. If the 
Gospels are not m their main outlines historically true, 
Christianity is no more divine than Shakespeare. It may be 

307 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the highest development of man ; but it can have no pre- 
tence to be esteemed a revelation from God. 

The objections of this school have done more to under- 
mine the belief of the educated classes in Christianity as a 
divine revelation than any one single cause. They have 
largely created the so-called rationalism of the Continent. 
They are widely diffused in America. In our own country, 
a numerous class of writers who obtain ready access to our 
periodical literature are not only imbued with similar views, 
but write with the quiet assumption that the historical found- 
ation of Christianity cannot be defended. 

As my subject is a wide one, I must address myself to it 
without any preliminary observations. The question before 
us is simply this, Are the Gospels credible histories, in the 
sense that other writings of the same description are ? or 
are the larger portion of their contents fictitious ? 

It should be observed that although these schools sup- 
port their views by an immense critical apparatus, the 
real a/cav^aAov of the Gospels is the supernatural element 
which they contain. Apart from this, their historical cha- 
racter would never have been questioned. The theoiy that 
miracles are impossible underlies the entire mass of these 
objections. But the question of the miraculous has been 
already handled by another lecturer. I shall therefore 
only observe on it that it forms no portion of a strictly 

308 



■ MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

historical inquiry. It appertains to the abstract regions of 
thought. History has to deal with evidence, not with ab- 
stract dogmas or philosophical questions. To begin an 
historical inquiry with the assumption that miracles are 
impossible, and that any event which involves the super- 
natural must be a fiction, is quietly to assume the point at 
issue. 

But as the Christian Church is an institution which 
actually exists, and as its origin can be traced up to the times 
of Jesus Christ, and as it is erected on the Gospels as its 
foundation, these schools are fully aware that the question 
cannot be settled by the quiet assumption that miracles are 
impossible. The case stands thus. The Christian Church 
exists. It has had its origin in the events of past history. 
The Church itself asserts now, and has asserted in all ages, 
that it is founded on the historical truth of the divine person 
of Clirist our Lord, as He is depicted in the Gospels. If the 
Gospels are true, they give a rational account of its origin, 
But those with whom I am reasoning deny that they are a 
statement of historic facts, and consequently that they are 
not the true account of it. But as the Church is an 
historic fact, they are quite aware that any mere general 
assumption that miracles are impossible is not sufficient. 
They find themselves, therefore, compelled to do two things, 
— first, to invent a critical apparatus to destroy the credibility 

309- 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the Gospels ; and, secondly, to propound a theory which 
shall account for the origin of the Church on principles 
purely human. The solution propounded is the mythical 
and Tiibingen theories. 

Tliis critical apparatus keeps two aims in view, — first, to 
prove the existence of statements in the Gospels at variance 
with those of contemporaneous history ; secondly, to show 
that these narratives abound with a multitude of contra- 
dictions. To effect this latter purpose, every variation of 
statement is made to assume the character of a contradiction. 
The extent to which this has been carried is scarcely credible. 

This process having as they hope destroyed the substance 
of the Gospels, the next procedure is to invent a theory out 
of the imagination as the account of the origin of Christi- 
anity, and to propound it as true history. 

At first sight it would appear to have been the easiest 
course to assert that they are simple forgeries, in the same 
sense in which the Donation of Ccnstantine or the False 
Decretals are forgeries. But this is what no unbeliever of 
the present day who regards his literary reputation ventures 
to propound as the alternative to their historical credibility, 
Why is the simple course abandoned, and an infinitely com- 
plicated theoiy substituted in its place? The answer is 
that their entire phenomena negative the supposition that 
they could have originated in dhectly conscious fraud. 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

A more elaborate theory, therefore, has to be substituted 
for the simple one. It must be observed that I can only 
speak of it in its general aspect, for its modifications 
are extremely numerous, and hardly any two writers can 
be found who take precisely the same view. But the 
following may be stated as the principles which underlie 
these systems of modern unbelief, throwing aside their minor 
details. 

First. That miracles being impossible, no supernatural 
element whatever enters into the character of the historical 
Jesus. 

Second. That He was probably a very great man, though, 
whenever the exigencies of the system require it, it is 
necessary to assume that He was deeply implicated in the 
prejudices and superstitions of the age in which He lived. 

Third. That He probably believed Himself to be the 
Messiah expected by His countrymen, though as to the 
precise nature of His Messianic claims my opponents are 
not agreed. 

Fourth. That He succeeded in inspiring a crowd of fol- 
lowers with an enthusiastic attachment to Him. 

Fifth. That they w^ere honest people after their fashion ; 
but were impelled by an enthusiasm only equalled by their 
credulity. 

Sixth. That they invented a multitude of fabulous 

3H 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Stories, ascribed them to Jesus, and in time mistook them 
for facts. 

Seventh. That out of these and kindred elements, aided 
by a succession of developments, the human Jesus was 
gradually metamorphosed, in the course of the seventy years 
which followed the crucifixion, into the Christ of the 
Synoptic Gospels, and in a hundred and thirty into that 
of the Gospel of St. John. 

Now, as these schools deny the existence of the super- 
natural, this whole development must have been due to 
causes which are purely human j in one word, to the laws 
which regulate the developments of the moral and spiritual 
worlds. As those of the natural world have been effected 
through the agency of natural laws, so the creation of the 
Jesus of the Evangelists is due to laws which regulate with 
equal potency the action of the mind. Both sets of laws 
are equally constant and invariable. 

To examine the critical apparatus which has been applied 
to the Gospels for the purpose of proving their unhistorical 
character, could only be accomplished in a work of con- 
siderable length. I shall therefore only make two observa- 
tions on the principles adopted. 

First. These schools assault the Gospels by charging 
them with containing a multitude of inaccuracies, discre- 
pancies, and contradictions. While they do this they care- 

3I2 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

fully keep in the background the minute accuracies, agree- 
ments with contemporaneous history, and plain indications 
of autoptic testimony with which they abound. Such a 
line of conduct is the same thing as to place before the 
Court which is to try the cause everything which an acute 
counsel can adduce in opposition, and to suppress the 
whole evidence for the defence. 

Secondly. A great majority of these objections are 
founded on a view of the Gospels which their writers ex- 
pressly repudiate. It is taken for granted that the Gospels 
are histories in the strictest sense of that word. By a strict 
history I mean a narrative in which the events are con- 
nected together in accordance with the sequences of time 
and place. This is the arrangement which is generally 
adopted in modern histories and biographies. But the 
Gospels expressly assert that they belong to a different class 
of writings. They are not histories^ but memoirs. In a 
memoir, the arrangement of events in the strict sequence 
of time and place is not the predominant idea. The 
Gospels are not only memoirs, but memoirs of a peculiar 
character. They are details of the actions and teachings 
of Jesus Christ written for the express purpose of teaching 
the Christian religion. In works of this kind the arrangement 
and grouping of events are formed on very different principles 
from those adopted in the composition of pure histories. 

3?3. 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

As this is a most important point, I must adduce proof 
of it which is beyond all contradiction. St John's Gospel 
asserts, in as many words, that it was the purpose of 
its author to ^mte such a memoir, and not a strict history. 
At chap. XX., ver. 30, 31, he says, "And many other signs 
truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are 
not written in this book : but these are written, that ye may 
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and that 
believing ye may have life through His nam.e." Again, in 
the last verse of the Gospel it is expressly stated that Jesus 
did many things which the writer has not recorded. 

The author therefore clearly asserts that he has made a 
selection of certain events in the life of Jesus Christ, from a 
very much larger number, with which he was acquainted, 
and that the principle which guided him, both in the selec- 
tion and arrangement, was a religious one. "These are 
written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ," etc. 
It is impossible more distinctly to assert that the Gospel is 
a religious memoir. 

No less clear is the statement of St. Luke. He says 
" that he wrote in order to the most excellent Theophilus, 
that he might know the certainty of the things in which he 
had been instructed." The original shows that the in- 
struction was given with a definite religious purpose. The 
Gospel is "a declaration of those things most surely 

314 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

believed among Christians." In one word, the work is a 
memoir, and not a history. 

If it be rephed that Luke says that he wrote " in order," 
(ev To^zi)^ I answer that there are other orderly arrange- 
ments besides those of time and place ; and that if a work 
is a religious memoir, the arrangement would be regulated, 
though not exclusively, by the reference of the facts to the 
religious end in view. 

The assertions of the other two Gospels are not so ex- 
press, but viewed in connection with their contents they 
prove that they belong to the same class of writings. Mark 
writes, "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God." Here a religious purpose is asserted to 
be the guiding principle of the work. Matthew, in accord- 
ance with Hebrew phraseology, entitles his work "The 
book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, 
the son of Abraham." The whole contents of the Gospel 
answer to this description. It was written to prove that 
Jesus was the Messiah of prophecy according to the con- 
ceptions of Jewish Christianity. 

Such being the distinct assertions of the writers of the 
Gospels as to the character of their works, it is absurd to 
criticize them as one might be justly entitled to do if four 
Boswells had set forth four lives of Dr. Johnson, the arrange- 
ment of which was professedly regulated by the historical 

31S 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

sequence. The writer of a religious memoir is entitled to 
adopt a very different order of events in his narrative from 
that which ought to be adopted by the writer of a history. 

An illustration will make this matter plain. If I were to 
compose a biography of Wesley, I should be bound to nar- 
rate the events in the order of time, with a distinct specifi- 
cation of the order of place ; but if I were to compose a 
memoir for the purpose of teaching the doctrines of Wesley- 
anism, I should follow a very different arrangement. Still 
more remarkable would be the variation in the arrangement 
if I wrote his memoir for the purpose of proving that Wesley 
never designed that the Church which he founded should 
dissent from the Church of England. 

Such being the character of the Gospels, objections which 
would be serious as against regular histories are harmless 
against compositions of this description. A large portion 
of their alleged discrepancies arise from the different ar- 
rangement of the events narrated in them, owing to the 
predominance in them of the religious idea. 

Now observe that in compositions of this description it 
frequently happens that the connecting links which would 
make events perfectly harmonize together, are wanting, simply 
because the purpose of the writer has not led him to record 
them. I adduce a single instance where the connecting 
link has been accidentally preserved, and which at once 

316 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

converts a narrative against which most serious objections 
might have been alleged, into one of the strongest proofs of 
the historical truthfulness of the Evangelists. 

We all remember the account of the murder of John the 
Baptist. It is told with all those minute and delicate 
touches which are the peculiar indication of autoptic 
testimony. It places before our eyes the great feast — the 
young lady dancing her lascivious dance — the words of 
Herod's vow — the girl's going out with excitement to her 
mother — the demand of the Baptist's head in a large dish — 
the sorrow and reluctant consent of Herod — the mission of 
the executioner — the presentation of the head to the girl, 
and by her to her mother. Everything betokens the pre- 
sence of an eye-witness. 

The narrative is open to this obvious objection : How 
could the disciples of Christ, mean and low as they were, 
procure so accurate a description of an event which hap- 
pened in the palace at the great feast ? There were neither 
newspapers nor reporters in those days. But this is only 
the beginning of the difficulty. The authors of the Gospels 
profess to give us the ipsissima verba which were uttered by 
Herod, in the retirement of his palace, when the reports 
brought him of the fame of Jesus rendered him conscience- 
stricken. The words are most remarkable, and leave no 
alternative between their being the words of Herod or a 

317 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

forgery. "It is John," says he, "whom I beheaded: he 
is risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do show 
forth themselves in him." Our version spoils the force of 
the last words — ai Zvva\xuQ kvEpyovaLV iv avTcZ — ^which, 
rendered literally, are, " The powers energize in him." 
This is certainly a most singular expression, and one open 
to a strong suspicion of forgery ; for how could the followers 
of Jesus have got hold of the very words of an utterance 
of Herod spoken in the retirement of the palace ? 

But besides all this, the words ai SwajUEig Ivspyovaiv 
Iv avT(^ plainly imply that it was the general idea 
that a large number of miracles had been wrought by 
our Lord. My opponents suppose that the historic Jesus 
only attempted to work miracles in a very few ques- 
tionable cases, and that the multitude of miracles which 
have been subsequently ascribed to Him are the inventions 
of His deluded followers. Such are the difficulties. Now 
for their solution. 

It has been observed that the author of the Acts of the 
Apostles tells us that among the teachers of the Church at 
Antioch during Paul's sojourn there, was Manaen, who was 
a foster-brother of Herod the Tetrarch. This is told us in 
a manner which is purely incidental, and supplies us with a 
possible source from whence the information mJght have 
been derived. Still it by no means follows that a man w^ho 

318 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

had the same wet-nurse as Herod was an inmate of his 
palace, or witnessed the great feast. 

But a passage of the most incidental character in St. Luke's 
Gospel supplies us with the source of information which we 
want. In narrating our Lord's last journey to Jerusalem, 
Luke tells us that He was accompanied by the twelve 
apostles, and several women who ministered to Him. Of 
these he designates three by name. One of these is described 
as Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward. 

Here then we have the very person we are in w^ant 
of. Chuza's office of iiriTpoTrog, or steward, imposed on 
him the duty of superintending the great feast. He there- 
fore witnessed the whole procedure, and his wife was in 
constant communication with the disciples. His office 
must have brought him into daily communication with his 
master. What more likely than when he waited on Herod 
for his orders, he would ask him the news ; and that he 
should report to him the fame of the great teacher with 
whom his wife was in attendance ? He was therefore in the 
exact situation to have heard Herod's conscience-stricken 
exclamation. The source of information is before us. The 
incidental mention of Joanna and her husband affords to 
this narrative an attestation such as few events in past his- 
tory possess. If this incident had been lost, the difficulty 
would have been insuperable. The manner in which little cir- 

319 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

cumstances dovetail into one another in the Gospels is only- 
consistent with their historical character. It would be im- 
possible if they were bundles of myths or legends. 

I adduce one instance of the manner in which the Gos- 
pels fulfil the conditions of history, even where the absence 
of the connecting link has occasioned serious difficulty. 
You all know that the want of any reference in the Synop- 
tics to the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus is the 
stronghold of those w^ho deny its historical credibility. In 
the absence of any direct information, we are driven for the 
solution of the difficulty to the regions of conjecture. 

Let us suppose, then, that the story is a myth. If so, it 
is obvious that it is a veiy grand and perfect one. The 
inventor must have been a man of the highest genius in 
his way. If a person wished to invent a description of 
a resurrection, he would find it impossible, in the same 
number of words, to surpass its perfection. If the author 

of St. John's Gospel has failed to depict another 
resurrection in an equally graphic manner, it was not for 

want of sufficient genius. Yet the Gospel asserts the 
fact of another resurrection — that of Jesus Christ; but it 
utters not one word descriptive of it. All that it says is 
that Mary Magdalene came in the morning, and found the 
tomb empty. 

I put it to your common sense to determine, on the sup- 

320 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

position that this Gospel was written by a partisan for the 
purpose of throwing a halo of glory around the person of 
his Master, whether the author of the resurrection of Lazarus 
would not have forged a still more magnificent description 
of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. His failure to do so is 
clearly not owing to lack of ability. 

But how stands the case on the supposition that the 
Gospel is historical? Everything is exactly as it should 
be. The Evangelist has given his pictorial description of 
the resurrection of Lazarus, because he witnessed it. He 
has not done so with respect to the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ, because no human eye beheld it. The narrative 
therefore fulfils the conditions of history, and breaks down 
under the tests which belong to fiction. 

The limits of a single lecture necessarily preclude me from 
entering on any minor consideration.* I therefore proceed 
at once to address myself to the demolition of the central 
position of my opponents, that while the Gospels contain a 
few grains of historic truth, buried beneath a multitude of 
fables, the greater portion of their contents is a spontaneous 
growth which sprung up in the bosom of the Christian 
society in the last seventy years of the first century ; and that 
by means of a number of mythical and legendary inventions, 

* Those who wish to see the cumulative force of the entire argument 
will find it in '* the Jesus of the Evangelists." It is impossible to com- 
press its reasonings. 

321 2t 



IJYTfflCAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

arid a succession of developments, a good and holy Jew, 
named Jesus, was metamorphosed mto the divine Christ of 
the Evangelists. In reasoning on this point, I shall assume 
nothing but what is conceded by the Schools in question. 

What are the concessions which I ask as the foundations 
of my reasoning ? Very simple ones indeed, and such that ^ 
no man can deny me. First, that the Gospels exist ; 
secondly, that the three first Gospels were in existence 
about A.D. I GO, and the fourth about i6o; thirdly, that in 
addition to the facts or fictions which make up our Gos- 
pels, they contain the delineation of a great character— Jesus 
Christ 

On the existence of this character my argument is 
founded. I now concentrate your attention on it, which 
I shall call for the future the portraiture of Jesus Christ 
our Lord. I need not prove that it exists in the Gos- 
pels, for the most ordinary reader perceives that it is 
there. The question is, How did it get there ? It is very 
fasy to say that the Gospels consist of a mass of fictions. 
But this is no account of the origin of the portraiture. St. 
Paul's Cathedral undoubtedly consists of an immense mul- 
titude of stones. But to say that a multitude of quarrymen 
dug them, and that a multitude of masons arranged them 
according to their spontaneous impulses, is no account of 
the origin of that magnificent structure. 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Let us carefully observe what this great portraiture of 
Jesus Christ, as it is exhibited in the Gospels, consists of 
It is the delineation of a great moral and spiritual character 
dramatized over a wide sphere of action. This portraiture 
is not the result of the artificial delineation of a character 
such as we see very commonly presented to us by historians, 
and of which we see very numerous examples in Lord 
Macaulay's History of England. Such characters are the 
artificial creations of the historian, and exhibit his view of 
what his heroes actually were. But neither of the authors 
of the Gospels have once attempted thus to delineate the 
character of his Master. But the portraiture of Jesus Christ 
is delineated in the Gospels most clearly and most distinctly. 
Of what materials then does it consist ? Only one answer 
can be returned. It is the combined result of all the facts, 
or, as my opponents say, fictions, which compose the Gospels. 

Now as the existence of this portraiture is not a theory, 
but a fact, it is plain that it must be accounted for. The 
assumption that the Gospels are historically true, and that 
their authors have truly delineated the actions and sayings 
of one who had an historical existence, is a rational account 
of its origin. But as these Schools deny their historical 
character, they are bound to tell us how the portraiture got 
there. The only answers which they propound are the 
mythic and Tiibingen theories. 

323 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

According to these theories, a good and holy Jew, who had 
attracted a crowd of enthusiastic and credulous followers, was 
gradually metamorphosed by them into the divine Christ 
of the Evangelists. The inventors of the character were 
impelled by purely spontaneous instincts. They had no in- 
tention of conscious deception. They mistook their Master 
for the Messiah. In the depths of their enthusiastic credulity, 
they invented multitudes of fictions, and in time mistook 
them for realities, and innocently ascribed them to Jesus. 
Development succeeded development. The fruitful mind of 
the infant Church created myth after myth. Party spirit 
raged. Compromise followed compromise. Spontaneous 
impulse by the end of the century had created the materials 
of our present Gospels. At last three unknown men ap- 
peared who arranged these materials into their present form, 
and produced the Synoptics. Sixty years later, another great 
unknovra arose, whose character must have been a compound 
of mysticism, enthusiasm, and imposture, and produced the 
fourth Gospel, which he successfully palmed off on the Church 
as the work of the Apostle John, some seventy or eighty 
years after he was silent in the grave. Such is the alternative 
which modern unbelief presents as a substitute for the his- 
torical reality of the portraiture of Jesus Christ as we behold 
it in the Gospels. 

One cannot help pausing to observe the kind of analogy 

324 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which exists between these theories and those of a certain 
class of philosophers who attempt to prove that the moral 
and religious being whom we designate man has been slowly 
developed out of the lower forms of life by causes purely 
physical Like as in the one case each development be- 
came an improvement on its predecessor, so in the other 
the lower fabulous creations must have died out, and the 
nobler ones prevailed, until at last there emerged from them 
Christianity and the glorious Christ of the Gospels. Physical 
philosophers, however, work at a great advantage in deve- 
loping an ape into a moral being, compared with the mytho- 
logists who developed a Jew of the year 30 into a Christ 
The one can draw cheques to any extent on the bank of 
eternity. If a million of years is not sufficient, a million of 
millions may be easily had. But in the other case my 
opponents are limited by the stern conditions of history ; 
and the respective periods of seventy and one hundred and 
thirty years are all that they venture even to demand. 

Now, observe ; the portraiture of the Jesus of the Evan- 
gelists consists of a multitude of parts which harmoniously 
blend into a complicated whole. It is composed, in fact, 
of as many distinct portions as there are incidents re- 
corded in the Gospels, which all concur in imparting to it a 
common effect. Those with whom I am contending admit 
that the character is a very great one. Many of them allow 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

that it is greater and more perfect than any which has ever 
existed as a fact or been conceived as a fiction. Yet the 
character, taken as a whole, presents us with an essential 
unity. This is obviously the case in the three first Gospels, 
and will hardly be disputed except on a very few subordi- 
nate points. But it is equally remarkable that of the various 
traits which compose the character, and which are very 
numerous, each presents us with a similar unity, although 
they are dramatized over a very wide sphere of action. To 
this fact I earnestly invite your attention. In the portraiture 
of Jesus at least twenty distinct aspects of moral character 
are blended together, and a number of subordinate ones not 
easy to be counted ; and each of these constitutes a sepa- 
rate unity, which harmoniously blends with the others^ and 
together compose the great unity of the portraiture. Nume- 
rous as they are, and dramatized over a wide sphere of 
action, they are yet depicted with a faultless propriety, 
even in the most minute details. Nor does it to any 
serious extent differ with the fourth Gospel. This is 
certainly the case as far as the actions attributed to Jesus 
are concerned, though it is not so obvious in the case of 
the discourses. Still even in these an underlying unity of 
conception can be found.* The four Gospels contain, in 

* See Appendix to " St, John's Testimony to Christ," in Professor 
Leathes' Boyle Lectures. No one who has not read this can form an 

326' 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

fact, four portraitures of one and the same Christ, only dif- 
fering from each other in the point of view from which they 
are taken. 

Now the obvious course would have been to have assumed 
that the conception of the original character was the creation 
of some great poet, and that the fourfold modification of it 
which our present Gospels exhibit has been the work of 
four subsequent poets. But this supposition the facts and 
phenomena of the case consign to the region of hopeless 
impossibilities. It is therefore necessary to assume that the 
character itself, and the Christianity of the New Testament, 
have been gradually elaborated bit by bit, not by a succession 
of great poets, but of credulous, enthusiastic mythologists ; 
and that the Synoptic Gospels originated in piecing together 
a multitude of tales which in the latter end of the first cen- 
tury were floating on the surface of the Christian Church. 

It is impossible to deny that the Jesus of the Evangelists 
is an immeasurably finer conception than either the Prome- 
theus of ^schylus, which exhibits the divine in sufi"ering, 
or the Macbeth or Hamlet of Shakspeare. Each of these 
characters is distinguished by a unity of conception which 
proves that as characters they are the creation of a single 
mind. But supposing we were to be told that these, and the 

idea of the extent of similarity of thought and expression to the fourth 
Gospel which underlies the Synoptics. 

327- 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

dramas which contain them, were not the creations of single 
poets, nor even of a succession of poets, but had been 
slowly elaborated, step by step, during a considerable in- 
terval of time by a number of credulous enthusiasts. My 
opponents would be the first to receive such a suggestion 
with shouts of derision. 

It is plain that if the portraiture of our Lord be an ideal 
creation, those who framed it must have been gifted with a 
high order of genius. 

Let me illustrate the position by the art of painting. 
High genius in painting is analogous to high genius in 
poetry. Let us suppose that we are contemplating a great 
ideal picture, — e.g.., the Marriage Feast in Cana of Galilee, 
at the Louvre, — and that we are told that it is not the work 
of a single artist, nor even of four, but of a succession who 
gradually developed it 

Nor, to make the case a parallel one, is this all which we 
should be asked to believe. As I have already observed, 
the portraiture of the Jesus of the Evangelists is made up 
of a multitude of parts, each of which has a separate unity, 
from the union of which the unity of the whole results. 
These are said to have been elaborated out of a number of 
myths and developments which have been the creations of 
many minds. In a similar manner the picture of the Mar- 
riage Feast at Cana consists of a number of separate figures 

328 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which harmoniously blend into a whole, and to which the 
magnificent colouring has been adapted. Now suppose 
that we were told that each of these figures had been gradu- 
ally developed into its present form by a set of improve- 
ments effected unconsciously by a succession of painters \ 
and that all that the artist who formed th.e picture did was 
skilfully to combine these separate figures, and place them 
in juxtaposition. Surely one would not be uncharitable in 
assuming that the author of such a suggestion had escaped 
from a lunatic asylum. 

Similar is the theory of these Schools as to the origin of 
the Gospels, and of the great character contained in them. 
Such a theory of their origin demands our acquiescence in a 
greater miracle than all the miracles of the New Testament 
united together. 

Viewed in its great outlines, this theory is self-condemned 
by its inherent absurdity. But when we apply a sound logic 
to its details, it vanishes like one of the palaces of the Ara- 
bian Nights. Professing to be based on rational principles, it 
violates all the laws of reason. For historic truth it substi- 
tutes wild dreams of the imagination. 

You will please to keep steadily in mind that the means 
by which my opponents undertake to metamorphose a 
Jew of the year 30 into a divine Christ, stated generally, 
are a succession of mythical and legendary creations and 

329 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

developments, contests and compromises, between hostile 
sects evolved in conformity with the laws of the intellectual 
and moral world. Let us now assume the truth of their 
position, and see how it will work. 

If the Jesus of the Evangelists be a development, it is 
evident that it must have had a starting-point. This could 
have been none other than the atmosphere of thought and 
feeling which existed in Judaea during the first thirty years of 
the first century.^ 

But none more firmly profess their belief in the reign 
of law in the world of mind and matter than those 
whose theories I am controverting. In consequence of this 
belief they pronounce all supernatural interventions in 
human affairs impossible. I thankfully concede to them 
the fact that all developments affecting the mind of man 
which are of purely human origin must be brought about in 
conformity with law. Let it be clearly understood, there- 
fore, that my reasoning is based on this assumption. 

This point being clear, the question immediately presents 
itself, what is the nature of the laws which regulate the mental 
developments of man, especially in his character of a moral 
and religious being ? Are they rapid, or do they require 

* To give precision to the argument, it is necessary to determine its 
definite character. But it is impossible to do so within the limits of a 
single lecture. 

330 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

long intervals of time for their elaboration? Are great 
changes in our moral or religious ideas of aquick or a slow 
growth ? The answer to these questions is of vital import- 
ance to the argument, because on the showing of my op- 
ponents they have only seventy years at their command 
during which they can develop the Christ of the Synoptics, 
and the Christianity of nearly all the Epistles, from the 
religious and moral ideas of the Judaism of the year 30. 

Fortunately for us, the universal testimony of history 
answers these questions with no ambiguous voice. The de- 
velopments of man, whether moral, social, or religious, are 
slow. The whole course of civilization, including within 
that term everything which relates to the growth of the 
mind of man, and which tends to his refinement and higher 
culture, is a veiy gradual one ; and its successive stages re- 
quire long intervals of time for their development. When- 
ever unbelievers attempt to account for the growth of human 
civilization from a savage state, or to develop a man out of 
an ape, in the one case they demand tens of thousands and 
in the other millions of years for its accomplishment. As 
this point is of great importance to the argument, I must 
adduce distinctive proof of it. 

No truth is more certain than that it is impossible for men, 
either individually or collectively, to raise themselves except 
by very gradual stages above that moral and spiritual atmo- 

331 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



sphere in which they v/ere born. We are united by the 
closest ties of habit and education with the past. We breathe 
from the dawn of our consciousness the very atmosphere of 
its thought and feeling. Every succeeding state of society 
is most closely bound to that which preceded it. Every 
great change in thought or feeling has been produced by a 
succession of changes leaving no deep gulf between. Indi- 
vidual progress, unless external influences are brought to 
bear on the mind, follows the same law of gradual growth. 

Even genius, and what are called the creative powers of 
the mind, are fettered by these conditions. All greatness 
is relative to and bears the impress of the age which pro- 
duced it. Great men differ from others only in being able 
to advance a few stages beyond ordinary humanity. But 
the greatest genius is unable to elevate itself into a very high 
region of thought or feeling at a single bound, or to sever 
the links which unite it with the past. The utmost effect 
which the greatest of men have been able to produce on 
those by whom they have been surrounded is to cause their 
actual developments to advance at a somewhat accelerated 
ratio. 

To the truth of these general principles all history 
testifies. When we measure each stage of human growth, 
we find that it has occupied long intervals of time. So 
gradual is the process, that considerable changes can only 

332 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

be discovered after the lapse of lengthened periods. The 

whole history of philosophy, art, morality, and religion 

testifies to this. All philosophic schools of thought have 

been of gradual growth. The daub of a savage has never 

suddenly developed itself into the creations of a Michael 

Angelo or a Rubens, nor have his rough imitations of 

the human form passed but by a succession of gradual 

stages into the perfection of a Phidias. Poetry, the most 

creative of arts, is subject to similar conditions. The ideas 

with which the poet works are those of the age in which he 

lives. He paints the phenomena and reflects the line of 

thought, the morahty, the religion, the intellectual and social 

conditions of the times which gave him birth. What he 

accomplishes is to exhibit them under new combinations. 

A bushman never at a single bound became a Homer or a 

Shakspeare, 

The history of philosophy bears witness that the universal 
law of our nature is a gradual growth. Each of its develop- 
ments was closely allied to that which preceded it, and 
directly grew out of it. Each School has occupied a con- 
siderable time in its development, has grown out of that 
which preceded it, and prepared the way for its successor. 
The interval which separates the respective stages is small. 
Each great race of mankind has also created a philosophy 
stamped with its own impress, and directly related to its 

333 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

peculiar character. A native of Australia has never suddenly 
elevated himself into a Socrates. 

The same law is no less applicable to religions. We 
know no instance of the direct creation of one. It is true 
that the origin of many is buried in the obscurity of the 
past. Yet as soon as they emerge into the light of history, 
it is clear that they are subject to a law of gradual growth ; 
and after they have attained their full development, to a no 
less remarkable law of gradual decay. All the religions on 
earth, with the exception of Christianit}^, bear witness to 
this rule. What have been called new religions, have been 
evolved out of previously existing materials, modified and 
adapted to the growth and decay of civilization. No 
Fetish worshipper, however lofty his genius, could have 
evolved the systems of Brahmanism or Buddhism by a 
single bound of his imagination. 

If the law of the growth of religions is a very gradual one, 
that of our moral ideas is far more so. Improvements in 
the great moral principles which regulate the life of man 
are most painfully slow. All the great races of mankind 
have presented the same general outlines of character, with 
only slight improvements, from age to age. I quote only 
two examples, the modem French and Germans. How 
strikingly like are certain portions of the character of the 
former, to the picture of the Gauls given in the pages of 

334 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY, 



Caesar ; or to the descriptions of the same race inhabiting a 

distant region which the great apostle has drawn in the 

Epistle to the Galatians. We may still read the general 

outline of the character of the German race in- the pages of 

Tacitus. Developments there have been, and the slowness 

is sadly disappointing to the philanthropist. To be able 

even to recognize progress, we must survey long intervals 

of time. The optimist has indeed need of patience ; and 

the most enthusiastic may be certain that long ages before 

any considerable advance is made, according to the mere 

laws of natural development, he will be slumbering in the 

grave. 

But it must not be forgotten that the developments which 
our opponents postulate are always in the way of progres- 
sive improvements. Stern historical fact compels us to 
assert that developments are frequently retrogressive. 

No less gradual is the moral progress of the individual. 
It is also a painful but undeniable fact that retrogressive 
ones are much more rapid than progressive ones. The 
moral ideas in the midst of which we are educated cling 
to us with the firmest grasp. The best men exhibit only a 
slight advance above the general morality of their age. 

I now draw your attention to the fact that the inventive 
powers of the composer of fiction are limited by the same 
laws. He too, in the strict sense of that term, is unable 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

to create the new. The materials with which he can work 
are the idealization of the times in which he lives. 
Whether he be poet or novel writer, he can neither invent 
a new religion or a new morality. Mythical inventions of 
every kind embody the state of thought, feeling, and general 
idealization of the times which produced them. The entire 
mass of existing mythology testifies to this fact. 

Such, then, are the instruments and materials with which 
my opponents have to work in the elaboration of Christianity 
out of Judaism, and in metamorphosing a human Jesus into 
a divine Christ Let us examine the possibility of the 
attempt 

We must place ourselves in the position of the followers 
of Jesus on the evening of the crucifixion. His individual 
influence had gathered around Him a number of enthusi- 
astic and credulous followers who mistook Him for the 
Messiah of popular expectation. The crucifixion certainly 
dashed their hopes. But according to the theory of my 
opponents, in the height of their enthusiasm tliey deter- 
mined to believe in Him as the Messiah still. To carry 
out this resolution, it is obvious that new ground had to be 
taken. A development of some kind was absolutely necessary. 
No amount of credulity could mistake a dead body moulder- 
ing in the grave for the Messiah of Jewish expectation. 

It was absolutely necessary, therefore, if His Messiahship 

33S 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

could become a possibility, that the crucified Jesus should 
be rescued from the tomb. If a resurrection could not be 
effected in reality, it was indispensable that one should be 
in imagination. Until His followers could be brought in 
considerable numbers to beHeve that this had happened, no 
developments in the direction of the Gospels were possible. 

The most obvious expedient to have accomplished this 
would have been for some of the disciples to have done 
that which, according to one of the Evangelists, the Jews ac- 
cused them of, viz., to have stolen the body, and report that 
Jesus was risen from the dead. But those against whom I 
am reasoning do not venture to accuse them of conscious 
fraud. This assumption all educated unbelievers have long 
abandoned as hopelessly untenable. Such a basis will cer- 
tainly not bear the weight of the Christianity of the New 
Testament. In place of this, they assume that the credulity, 
idealism, and enthusiasm of the followers of Jesus was 
bottomless. With this machinery they think that He can 
be rescued from the grave. 

Two theories have been propounded for this purpose. 
One is that some enthusiastic woman — Mary Magdalene, for 
example — thought that she saw Jesus with the mind's eye, or 
mistook the gardener for Him, and converted this appear- 
ance into a bodily reality. She communicated her en- 
thusiasm to the rest Others may have imagined that they 

337 22 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

saw Him in a similar manner, and committed a similar mis- 
take. The other theory is that He was buried in a swoon, 
that He managed to creep out of His grave, that He partially- 
recovered, and died shortly after in retirement. On such a 
foundation my opponents propose to erect the whole weight 
of the historic Church, and from such a chimera to develop 
the portraiture of the divine Christ. 

The second theory I should not have mentioned if it had 
not been dignified by the name of Bunsen. It is obvious 
that it vvill not support the weight of the Christian Church. 
Wliat ! a man who died from weakness shortly after creeping 
out of his grave, metamorphised by his follov/ers into a 
divine Messiah, and seated on the right hand of God ! If 
He lived in retirement, and died in Phoenicia shortly 
afterwards, — according to an assumption for which there is 
not even the ghost of historical testimony, — His followers 
had access to Him or they had not. If we adopt the 
former part of the alternative, no amount of credulity 
could have mistaken Him for a glorious Messiah rescued 
from the tomb. The very sight of Him m.ust have 
acted as a complete extinguisher on the powers of the 
imagination. If we adopt the latter, it falls under the 
general head that the belief in the resurrection was merely 
due to an excited imagination. All the assistance which it 
renders is to dispose of the dead body. 

33^ 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Now, in theoiy, nothing is easier than to say that an 
excited woman saw Jesus with her mental eye, mistook it for 
a bodily reality, and communicated her enthusiasm to the 
rest of His followers. But in practice, such things are not 
quite so easy. Although it is no hard matter to persuade 
the credulous to believe in the appearance of ghosts and 
phantoms, yet I do not know that the whole history of man 
presents us with a single example of a great institution 
which owes its origin to such a belief But even the 
credulous believers in such apparitions are very difficult 
to persuade that they have actually seen a man who once 
had died again restored to life. I doubt whether the entire 
mass of fictitious literature presents us with anything at all 
analogous to the supposed belief of the credulous followers 
of Jesus in the resurrection of their Master. Even persons 
who have a most imperfect knowledge that nature is 
governed by law, are quite av/are that dead men do not 
revive. The followers of Jesus could have been hardly 
more credulous than modem spiritualists, yet these lattei 
have not yet succeeded in erecting a great institution on the 
basis of an actual resurrection from the dead, or even on 
the presence of a spirit in a table. Supposing, therefore, 
that some fanatic follower of our Lord made the mistake 
in question, it could really have been no easy matter to 
have communicated this enthusiasm to the rest, damped 

339 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIAAVTY. 

as their spirits were by the crucifixion. Still more difficult 
would it have been for any considerable number to have 
made the mistake of converting a flight of the imagination 
into an objective fact. At any rate my opponents must 
concede that to have persuaded any number of men under 
such circumstances that the crucified Jesus was actually 
risen from the dead must have required a considerable 
interval of time. 

It would be much more easy to create a belief in a 
resurrection after the lapse of a century, than within a few 
years of the event. When we survey a past event through 
the haze of time, it helps to confuse our ideas as to 
what is possible. But long intervals of time so convenient for 
the physical speculator are precisely the things which my 
opponents have not at their disposal. Seventy years is all 
which they themselves think it possible to ask for ; and as 
all developments are slow, one or two entirely exhaust it, 
and they require a multitude to effect their purpose. But 
not only was it necessary to get some of the enthusiastic 
followers of our Lord to believe in His resurrection, but 
also to constitute a society founded on its basis. Until 
this was done, all development was impossible. But each 
step requires a considerable interval of time. But how 
could the Church be held together while the belief in the 



resurrection was forming ? 



340 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

But even supposing that Jesus by the power of the 
imagination had been rescued from the grave, it became a 
very serious question what to do with Him. No amount of 
creduhty could have brought Him into daily communication 
with His followers. If He continued on earth, His not 
doing so was a very serious affair. The obvious expedient 
was that He should be taken up into heaven, from which at 
some future day he should come back again and take 
possession of his Messianic throne. Such is the idea 
adopted by these schools of thought, and they are never 
wearied with telling us that the chief if not the only article 
in the primitive belief of the followers of Jesus was His 
speedy return to realize their expectations of His Messianic 
glory. 

Be it so ; for the consequences are very serious to the 
position of those whose views I am combating. His followers 
then expected Him to return as the Jewish Messiah. Now 
nothing is more certain than as long as this expectation lasted 
there could have been no development in the direction of 
the Christ of the Gospels. How long, then, did this state 
of stagnation last in the bosom of the Church ? When did 
it occur to the followers of Jesus that the expectation of the 
speedy return of their Master was a baseless one, and that 
they must set themselves to work to develop a different 
conception of a Christ ? It is a fact that such beliefs do 

34t 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

not speedily die out, and that they can survive many a 
disappointment. The modern prophetic School affords a 
striking proof of the tenacity of such hopes. They have repeat- 
edly prophesied that the Advent will happen in our times ; 
and notwithstanding the falsification of their predictions, I 
believe that they still cling to this belief. At any rate it 
has required a long interval of time to undeceive them ; 
and as credulity was, according to the views which I am 
combating, the leading trait of the followers of Jesus, it 
must have been a considerable interval of time before they 
could have been persuaded to part company with their 
darling expectation. But as long as a Jewish Messiah satis- 
fied their aspirations, the Church could have developed no 
new Messianic conceptions. 

But to afford something like a basis for reasoning, I will 
suppose these obstacles to have been surmounted j that the 
work of development has commenced, and that the v/omb 
of the Church is at last become pregnant with its future 
Christ. Fresh and ever-increasing difficulties present them- 
selves for solution. 

Let it be observed that, after they have effected the 
resurrection, all which has been accomplished was to repair 
the damage inflicted on the Church by the crucifixion, and 
to restore to it, as a necessity of its existence, a living 
instead of a dead, Messiah. That Messiah was still the 

342 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Messiah of Judaism. They have scarcely advanced a stage 
m the creation of the Gospels, and of the Christ therein 
delineated, — not to say of the entire moral and spiritual 
teachin.-? of the New Testament. 

Let us observe the steps of the process by which the 
metamorphose must have been effected. It is, say my 
opponents, very uncertain whether the historic Jesus ever 
attempted to perform a miracle. But according to the 
conceptions of the times. His followers thought that the 
Messiah ought to have performed them. To supply the 
defect, they invented a mass of miraculous stories, and in 
their fond credulity thought that Jesus had actually per- 
formed them, and thus the delusion of His miraculous 
wonder-working w^as propagated in the Church. But all 
experience proves that mythic and legendary miracles are 
grotesque. Yet those in the Gospels are all sober ones, 
and stamped with a high moral tone. They must therefore 
have undergone a succession of developments before they 
could have assumed their present form. Still a Jewish 
Messiah has yet to be transformed into the Jesus of the 
Evangelists. After a while a happy thought occurs to these 
uninstructed Jews. They determine to invest the Teacher 
with whom they had habitually conversed with a character 
at once divine and human. The mythic faculty is again 
invoked, and the human Jesus, by the aid of development 

343 



MYTinCAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

after development, gradually assumes the aspect of the 
divine Christ. In a similar manner they feel that the moral 
aspect of the Messiah of their fondest expectations must 
undergo a change, and in due time the triumphant King 
becomes the meek and the lowly Jesus, and the morality of 
Pharisaism becomes that of the New Testament. 

Few persons are at all aware of the enormous difficulties 
which would have beset any persons who, whether con- 
sciously or unconsciously, set themselves to metamorphise a 
Jew of the year 30 into the Christ of the Gospels. Fami- 
liarity with the character induces numbers to think that 
poets or fabulists, inventors of myths and legends, might 
easily have created it. To form a correct estimate of the 
difficulty, it is necessary to transport ourselves out of the 
nineteenth century into the Jewish atmosphere of thought 
and feeling of the century which preceded the Advent. A 
starting-point it must have had. There could have been no 
other than it 

Let it be observed that before the elaboration of the 
Jesus of the Gospels, those who fabricated the conception 
were wholly without a model to guide them. All ancient 
fact or fable fails to furnish anything at all analogous to this 
great character. Such models as they had would have 
guided its inventors wrong. The only ones which they 
possessed were the popular Messianic conceptions of the 

314 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

period, and the prevailing Jewish ideas of religion and 
morality. Besides these, they might have fallen back on the 
general ideas contained in the Old Testament Scriptures 
and the apocryphal books. The ideal of a Jewish hero 
would certainly not have helped them in forming the con- 
ception of the Evangelical Jesus. One apocryphal book 
has been frequently referred to as affording considerable aid 
— the Book of Enoch. I have fully discussed this subject 
elsewhere,* and the conclusion to which I have arrived 
is, I think, incontrovertible, that even if we grant that its 
Messianic portions were composed prior to the Christian 
era (a concession which I am by no means prepared to 
make), the aid which it would have afforded the mytho- 
logists who invented the Christ of the Gospels would have 
been inconsiderable. To avoid a lengthened controversy 
as to its date, I am quite willing that these schools of 
thought should make all the use they can of them. 

Let me point out a few of the difficulties which must have 
beset the path of the inventors of the great portraiture of 
the Gospels. 

Every reader at once recognizes that the character who is 

there depicted is a superhuman one; or rather, to speak 

more accurately, it is exhibited as uniting the human and 

the divine. This is a plain matter of fact, and is quite 

** Jesus of the Evangelists," chap. x. 

345. 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

independent of the question whether the EvangeUsts were 
right in so representing it. Nor is my argument at all 
affected by any supposed difficulty in defining, in the terms 
of an abstract creed, the precise measure of the divine 
which they have ascribed to it. All that I contend for is 
that the Jesus of the Evangelists is dramatized as uniting a 
divine and human consciousness, and that it is exhibited 
with a faultless propriety. 

Now the moment the mythologists made a movement in 
this direction, a hundred problems of a most difficult cha- 
racter must have demanded their solution before they could 
advance a single step. I can only adduce one or two 
examples. How was the human to be represented as acting 
in union with the divine, and the divine with the human ? 
In what proportions were they to be combined ? How was 
the one to be prevented from swallowing up the other? Let 
it be observed that there was no model to guide them. The 
attempt to exhibit the divine and human in a single per- 
sonality had never been attempted before. 

The difficulty will be at once seen from a reference to the 
Old Testament. The nearest approach which it exhibits to 
uniting the human and the divine is in the act of prophetic 
inspiration. But in this the two factors are invariably dis- 
tinct. The Old Testament prophet, when under the in- 
fluence of the prophetical illapse, invariably prefaces his 

346 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

utterances with " Thus saith the Lord." These words are 
Eever once placed in the mouth of Jesus throughout the 
entire Gospels. Instead of them, His most solemn utter- 
ances are introduced with the words, " I say unto you." 
The prophet is generally vehemently excited. The Jesus of 
the Evangelists is invariably calm. 

You must never forget that the position of those against 
whose theories I am reasoning compels them to assume that 
the contents of the Gospels have been elaborated by the 
action of a multitude of minds. Be it so. It follows that 
these problems must have received as many different solu- 
tions as there were minds engaged in the attempt. Instead 
of the character which resulted therefrom presenting a unity 
of aspect, it would have been a mass of hopeless confusion. 

My limits will only allow me to draw your attention to 
one or two of these difficulties out of the vast multitude. 
The historical Jesus was unquestionably crucified. How 
was a crucified man to be represented as divine ? He died 
in agony. How was an artist to dramatize the divine in 
suffering ? If my hearers are not aware of the difficulties 
which would have attended the solution of these and 
kindred questions, I advise them to study the creation of 
the great Grecian dramatist, the Prometheus Vinctus of 
^Eschylus, and compare it with the Jesus of the Gospels. I 
am sure that correct taste will pronounce that the creation 

347 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the fishermen of GaHlee utterly transcends that of the 
genius of the great tragedian. 

Nothing is more difficult, even in works of fiction, than to 
combine the attributes of holiness and benevolence as har- 
moniously acting in the same person. In living men they 
almost invariably jar. They possess them imperfectly, and 
one generally counteracts the action of the other. The 
difficulty of combining them is greatly increased if the being 
uniting them is to be represented as both human and divine. 
Holiness and benevolence are in fact opposite sides of 
character, and no more difficult problem can be presented 
to the imagination than to exhibit them as acting har- 
moniously in the same character. No question in theology 
is more embarrassing than the mode in which they coexist 
in God. 

It follows that if the contents of the Gospels were due to 
a multitude of minds, they must have exhibited as many 
aspects of the character of a Christ as there were fabulists 
engaged in its creation. But the character of the Jesus of 
the Gospels, in its combination of holiness with benevolence, 
presents us with a complete unity. Not only is the unity 
complete, but the perfection of the picture is inimitable. 
Wliere can we find, either in fact or fiction, anything like 
the perfection of the holiness and benevolence of the Jesus 
of the Evangelists ? Yet we are asked to believe that it has 

348^ 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

been a gradual growth created by successions of credulous 
mythologists. 

The moral and religious teaching of the Gospels forms 
a subject by itself of large dimensions, and it is impos- 
sible for me within the limits of a lecture to do more 
than glance at it.* It consists of two perfectly distinct 
portions : first, the subject of morality and religion as it 
is exhibited in the person of Jesus Christ ; secondly, as 
He taught them for the use of ordinary men. Most un- 
believers will admit that the portraiture of Jesus Christ, 
as it is exhibited in the Gospels, is one of the most 
spotless moral beauty, and the greatest elevation. I am 
quite aware that a few exceptions have been made to 
it ; but some of them are obviously founded on misappre- 
hension, and others are evidently incorrect. At any rate 
it cannot be denied that the entire moral aspect of the 
person of Christ is unique in human literature. 

No less remarkable is His moral teaching for the use of 
ordinary men. It is pure, elevated, beneficent, grand. It 
bears the unquestionable marks of having been the elabora- 
tion of a single mind. The parts are adapted to each other 
and to the whole. 

But our Lord's moral character, and His moral teaching 
as they are exhibited in the Gospels, consist of a number of 

* See '* Jesus of the Evangelists," chap. v. 
349 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

detached portions, "which together make up a compUcated 
whole. Their solution involves such a multiplicity of 
questions, as to render it difficult to count them. They are 
questions which the profoundest thinkers have solved in the 
most varied manner. Yet in the Gospels the mode of their 
solution is a complete unity. They coalesce with an 
inimitable beauty. Let unbelievers cavil as they may, an 
overwhelming majority of the holiest and the best of men 
have bowed before the character of the Jesus of the Evan- 
gelists in humble adoration, and felt that it was immeasurably 
above them. Numbers of these subjects were inquired into by 
ancient philosophers with the keenest interest, but they found 
no adequate solution. My opponents assert that this great 
character, around which the entire morality of Christianity 
centres, is not an historical one. How did it then originate ? 
The answer is, that it is founded on the traditional remi- 
niscences of the teaching of a Jewish peasant who died in 
early manhood ; and that the numerous parts of which the 
character and His teaching consist were unconsciously ela- 
borated in the course of many years by a multitude of 
credulous, enthusiastic mythologists. 

I must now advance to another stage of my argument. 
As my opponents assert that the development of the 
Gospels, and of the portraiture of the Christ which they 
contain, were entirely due to natural causes, it is evident 

350 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISIIANITY, 



that they must have been effected in conformity with the 
laws which regulate the developments of the human mind. 
Let us test this principle. 

Taking the atmosphere of Jewish thought and feeling as 
it existed in the year 30 as the starting-point, it is evident 
to every one at all acquainted with the subject, that the 
interval which separates its conceptions from those of the 
Gospels is far greater than that which separates any two 
types of human thought. To take a single example. The 
interval between the free spirit of morality as it is exhibited 
in the New Testament, and the casuistic and ritualistic 
tendencies of moral thought which ultimately developed 
themselves into Rabbinism, is profound. If, therefore, 
Christianity grew out of Judaism by a succession of natural 
causes, the interval between them must have been bridged 
over by a succession of developments. So, again, with 
respect to Messianic conceptions. A profound interval 
separates that of Christ from that of Barchocebas, to which 
Jewish Messianism was then tending. That of Barchocebas 
was a natural growth out of the popular Messianic concep- 
tions of the year 30, and separated from them by no great 
interval. But their development occupied no less than 
a century. But if the Jesus of the Evangelists grew otit of 
the popular idea. of the year 30, it is evident that the suc- 
cession of developments must have been very numerous, and 

351 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

have required long intervals of time, before it was possible 
to create the portraiture of Christ. 

Let me take another example, which those against 
whom I am reasoning cannot refuse to accept. The 
interval which separates the state of religious and moral 
thought involved in the primitive Mosaic institutions 
from that of the year 30 is considerable, though far 
less than that which separates the latter from that con- 
tained in the Gospels. In adducing this example, I use 
one most favourable to my opponents. Christians maintain 
that this development was accelerated by supernatural 
causes. The proper subject of comparison would have been 
one which both sides are agreed to have been effected by 
causes purely natural. I need not however fear making the 
concession, for it will more than bear the weight of my argu- 
ment. We will suppose that the entire history of Judaism, as 
those with whom I am reasoning say, contained in it no- 
thing supernatural. I ask you therefore to observe that the 
development in question was completed only after an interval 
of more than a thousand years from its commencement. 
Yet we are invited to believe that the Christianity of the 
Synoptics, and of the larger portion of the Epistles, was 
evolved in a period of seventy years, and the Christian 
Church erected on them, as its foundation, and that of the 
fourth Gospel in 130 years. 

352 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Let us take another mode of measurement of my oppo- 
nents' own choosing. The Synoptic Gospels, as they say, 
are separated from that of St. John by an interval of sixty 
years. Is it possible to bridge over the interval which 
separates the Synoptics from the Jewish atmosphere of 
thought and feeling of the year 30, in seventy years, if it 
required sixty years to effect the development in question ? 

Against one convenient assumption I must present a 
most respectful protest. Whenever it suits their purpose, 
the human Jesus is represented as a very great man, who 
towered high above the ordinary conditions of humanity. 
Again, when it is convenient He is represented to have 
been a v^tj little man, the prey of all the superstitions of 
His age. I am prepared to reason on either side of this 
alternative, but not on both. These Schools postulate 
greatness whenever they want to make a prodigious leap in 
religion and morality \ littleness when they want to account 
for the miraculous element in Christianity. But while I am 
ready to assume as the basis of the argument that the 
human Jesus was a great man, let it be understood that He 
could have been great only in the sense in which all other 
great men have been great. Those who deny the possibility 
of physical miracles must not, when it suits their purpose, 
assume the existence of moral ones. His greatness must 
have been limited by the conditions imposed on it by the 

353 23 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

environment of a Jew of the year 30 who was born a peasant, 
and perished at thirty-five years of age. 

Observe again, the miracles of the Gospels have to be 
invented somehow. I am ready to concede that miraculous 
stories of a certain type have been invented in rich abund- 
ance. But the whole class of fictitious miracles invented in 
credulous ages are stamped with a peculiar trait from which 
those of the Gospels are free. The one are monstrous, 
undignified, and grotesque. • The others are sober, dignified, 
and I think that my opponents will allow, if miracles are 
possible, worthy of God. The preservation of the apocry- 
phal Gospels enables us to know what sort of miracles the 
mythic spirit commencing with the next century attributed 
to Jesus Christ. I have examined the subject elsewhere. 
The following passage sums up the result : — 

"The case stands thus : our Gospels present us with the 
picture of a glorious Christ ; the mythic Gospels with that 
of a contemptible one. Our Gospels have invested Him 
with the highest conceivable form of moral greatness ; the 
mythic ones have not ascribed to Him one action which is 
elevated. In our Gospels He exhibits a superhuman wisdom ;. 
in the mythic ones a nearly equal superhuman absurdity. In 
our Gospels He is arrayed in all the beauty of holiness j in 
the mythic ones, this aspect is entirely wanting. In our 
Gospels, not one stain of selfishness defiles His character ; 

354 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

in the mythic ones, the Lord Jesus is both pettish and ma- 
licious. Our Gospels exhibit to us a sublime morahty; 
not a ray of it shines in those of the mythologists. The 
miracles of the one and the other are contrasted in every 
point. A similar opposition of character runs through the 
whole current of thought, feeling, morality, and religion." * 

I ask my opponents to account for this difference, and 
specially to say why in the second century the mythic 
spirit began to create a ridiculous Christ, and in the first it 
produced a glorious one j and through how many stages of 
development the creation passed uutil it culminated in what 
we read in the Gospels, and the interval of time to be 
assigned to each. 

But according to the theories I am combating, the 
Messianic aspects of the character of the Jesus of the 
Evangelists must have passed through a succession of 
developments before they could have attained their present 
form. Different parties had to invent different aspects ot 
it. Next, these had to procure acceptance in the various 
Churches. Each party would cling to its own views. The 
■formation of hostile sects in the Church was a certain con- 

* "Jesus of the Evangelists," p. 381. The entire collection oi 
apocryphal Gospels has been translated by Mr. Cowper. I am sure 
that their perusal will greatly confirm our faith in the historical character 
of the true. The order of mind which invented the one could not have 
invented the other. 

355 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

sequence. If they gradually wore themselves out, all ex- 
perience of sectarian warfare proves that the interval must 
have been long. We know as fact that nothing is more 
difficult than to effect compromises between contending 
Teligious factions \ and that they are only, if at all, possible 
after long and bitter experience. I ask you to compute for 
yourselves how many developments and compromises must 
have been required, and the interval of time each must have 
occupied ? 

Far more difficult and more numerous must have been 
the developments by which the moral aspects of the Gospels 
and of their divine Christ must have been elaborated out of 
the Judaism of the year 30, and the popular conceptions of 
its Messiah. I shall select for illustration only two ex- 
amples out of a vast multitude. One of the most marked 
distinctions between Gospel and ancient moral teaching is 
this : the whole aspect of ancient moral teaching assigned 
the highest place to the heroic and political virtues, and a 
subordinate one to the mild, meek, benevolent, and humbler 
ones. This is precisely reversed in the morality of the New 
Testament. Again : the aspect of a Jewish saint and hero, 
as it is depicted in the Old Testament, forms a singular 
contrast to that which the New Testament has assigned to 
Jesus Christ I have proved that moral developments in 
the direction of improvement are very slow. I propose, 

356 



^ MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

therefore, the following problem for mj opponents to 
solve. Through how many stages must these have passed 
before the creation of the Gospels became a possibility, and 
how many years must they have occupied ? 

But all the while that the Christian Church was creating 
a mythology, and struggling with developments and conten- 
tions and external opposition, it is an historical fact that it 
succeeded in extending itself over a wide geographical, 
area. This greatly aggravates the difficulty of developing an. 
improved Christ out of her pregnant womb. The wider 
the geographical area over which she gradually extended 
herself, the more difficult would have become the inter- 
change of ideas necessary for developments and compro- 
mises. It by no means follows that one little society would 
immediately swallow the mythic creation of another. 

I must observe that this portion of the argument is cumu- 
lative, and admits of being pressed to an indefinite extent. 

It now remains for those against whose theories I have 
been reasoning to count the number of these developments, 
and to assign a reasonable interval for each. If they will 
do so, they will then find that these theories are hopelessly 
untenable. 

I have hitherto argued, on the chosen position of my 
opponents, that the Synoptic Gospels were written about 
the year loo, and the fourth about i6o. Such dates are 

357 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISIIANITY. 

entirely fallacious, and against all evidence. But as far as 
my reasoning is concerned, it matters little when the Gos- 
pels were composed. If I can prove that the portraiture of 
Christ and the general aspect of the Gospels were fami- 
liarly known in the Church at a much earlier period, it is 
not the smallest difference for my argument whether they 
existed in an oral or a written form. The concession 
of seventy years for the creation of the Synoptic Gospels, 
and one hundred and thirty for that of St. John, has now to 
be entirely revoked. 

The most extreme of the School that I am opposing 
concede that the four most important epistles of St. Paul 
are unquestionably genuine, and written by him within less 
than thirty years after the resurrection. The genuineness 
of at least four others is conceded by the most eminent 
unbelievers. We have, then, before us genuine historical 
documents of Christianity, composed by its most active mis- 
sionary at about the same distance of time from the resur- 
rection as that which separates us from the repeal of the 
Com Law Act. 

Now by the aid of these epistles it is possible to prove by 
a multitude of incidental allusions that all the great features 
of the portraiture of Jesus Christ were fully developed when 
St. Paul ^vrote them. Nay, what is more, the manner in which 
the allusions are made prove that this portraiture was not a 

3S8 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

new one, but that it had been long known in the Christian 
Society. To exhibit this proof would require a lecture of 
equal length to the present. As I have given it already 
elsewhere,^ and it has not been assailed, I shall assume that 
my position is incontestable. 

The period of time during which the human Jesus must 
have been developed into the divine Christ of the Gospels, 
if the portraiture be a fictitious creation, must be reduced to 
one of less than ten years. But whether it be ten, seventy, 
or one hundred and thirty, it contradicts the laws by which 
all human developments are regulated. Its creation involves 
a moral miracle of the most stupendous character. 

My opponents postulate a number of conditions which 
history and philosophy refuse to concede. They require a 
long interval of time ; history will only grant them a short 
one. They require that developments should be rapid; 
they are always slow, especially moral ones. They requii-e 
the creation of elevated moral sentiment ; their only instru- 
ments with which to work are credulous mythologists. They 
require that developments should be always progressive 
towards higher perfection j history declares that they are 
frequently retrogade ones. They postulate party spirit, but 
it produces endless division. They require compromises, 
but they must be made by credulous enthusiasts. They 

• " Jesus of the Evangelists, " chap. xviU 
359 



MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

require unity of result; they postulate a multitude of 
agents. They ask for credulity, and are confronted by 
sobriety. They ask for seventy years ; historical fact will 
concede them less than ten. They deny physical miracles, 
and ask us to believe in moral ones. 

Such is the position of the school of thought against 
whom I have been reasoning. They are called by a sad 
misnomer rationalistic. I ask, are these theories rational, 
probable, or possible? Defenders of revelation have no 
grounds for dreading an appeal to reason. If the Gospels, 
and the glorious Christ therein delineated; have been evolved 
in accordance with the various theories against which I have 
been contending, it involves a greater miracle than all the 
miracles of the New Testament united together.^' 



360 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF ST. PAUL'S 

EPISTLES. 

BY THE 

REV. STANLEY LEATHES, M.A., 

PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, KING'S COLLEGE. 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



The attacks upon that body of traditional belief and re- 
ceived thought which Is conveniently expressed and con- 
monly understood by the term Christianity have turned 
very much of late years upon the authenticity of the several 
books composing the New Testament. Inquiries of this 
nature have commended themselves to an age which we 
need not shrink from characterising as critical and discrimi- 
nating. There is a manifest and a very intelligible pleasure 
to be derived from reopening questions which many have 
been accustomed to regard as settled, from proving former 
conclusions erroneous, or showing that considerable doubt 
still remains where certainty was believed to exist ; and in 
the natural enthusiasm attending investigations of this kind, 
it is by no means a matter of surprise if the actual import- 
ance of the results has been somewhat overrated. The 
inferences following from the conclusions arrived at, have 
been estimated in proportion to the supposed certainty of 
the conclusions. If a particular Gospel can be shown to be 

363 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



falsely, or at any rate with doubtful truth, ascribed to its 
traditional author, the inference drawn, or at least suggested, 
is the comparative depreciation, if not worthlessness, of that 
Gospel. We know not why, but it is frequently assumed 
that if everything is not in exact accordance with the 
popular belief in any matter, nothing which is popularly 
associated with that belief can reasonably be maintained. 
The whole edifice will fall, or must even be destroyed, 
because a stone here or there is faulty, or out of place. 
Because investigation shows that the foundation does not 
lie as it was thought to lie, therefore there is no foundation 
at all. The rashness and precipitancy of any such inference 
will be at once apparent to every thoughtful mind. Because 
the reasons usually assigned are inconclusive, it by no means 
follows that no reasons can be given. The central questions 
really involved, may be altogether unaffected by the techni- 
cal and subordinate question, who was actually the writer of 
some particular book. The critical investigation of author- 
ship may have positively no bearing at all on the opinions 
expressed, or the facts recorded in the book. Whether or 
not this be so in any given instance, it is at any rate con- 
ceivably possible in the abstract. 

In the case now before us, however, we have to deal with 
a converse position. There are four Epistles in the New 
Testament which have been admitted on all hands to be the 

364 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



veritable productions of the Apostle Paul. These are the 
two Epistles to Corinth, the Epistle to the Church at Rome, 
and the Epistle to the Galatians. The writers, if any, who 
have ventured to call in question the authenticity of these 
Epistles are so few, and so insignificant, as to be unworthy 
of mention. We may safely pass them by without fear of 
challenge or dispute. There is absolutely no room for any 
reasonable doubt that we have in our hands in these four 
letters the true and genuine compositions of Saul of Tarsus, 
after he had become a Christian. 

It will be my business, then, on the present occasion, to 
examine and weigh the precise value of this admission of 
authenticity, which can only be spoken of as universally 
made. What is the evidence in support of Christianity 
which can be fairly adduced from it ? In endeavouring to 
estimate the nature and amount of this evidence, I shall not 
assume these Epistles to be what we commonly understand 
by inspired. I shall regard them only as the natural human 
productions of a certain man whose personal history, to a 
considerable extent, can be discovered from them. If, on 
internal or other grounds, there is cause to believe they 
have any higher authority, that will be another matter. But 
we shall not assume it in dealing with them. Our aim in 
the first place must simply be to inquire what the accept- 
ance of these four Epistles as the work of St. Paul legiti- 

365 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



mately demands of us ; what are the inferences fairly 
deducible from their statements ; what insight they give 
us into the character and motives of the writer, and what 
information they convey as to the nature and consti- 
tution of the early Christian society to which they were 
addressed. 

And first, as to their date. We cannot place the death of 
the Apostle Paul later than the year of our Lord 68. It 
may have been the year before ; but as he is said by 
Jerome and Eusebius to have suffered under Nero, and 
Galba succeeded Nero in a.d. 6S, it cannot have been 
afterwards. Again, we are safe in saying that, on the sup- 
position of the latter date, these four Epistles had been 
written ten years before the Apostle Paul died ; that is to say, 
they were all™tten before the end of a.d. 58. Festus pro- 
bably succeeded Felix in the year of our Lord 60. But Paul 
had been two years a prisoner at Caesarea, when Festus came 
into the province ;* and these letters were written while he 
was still at liberty. We have, then, in St. Paul's Epistles, 
by which we mean always and exclusively these particular 
Epistles, undoubted genuine productions of about five-and- 
twenty years, or not much more, after the death of Jesus 
Christ. Making all due allowance for possible variation in 
the requisite dates, we are warranted in saying that the 

* Acts xxiv. 27. 
366 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



interval between the Crucifixion and the sending of these 
letters to their several destinations, did not exceed by more 
than two or three years the quarter of a century. It was 
certainly less than thirty years. 

The best way of appreciating such an interval as this is 
to take a corresponding period in our own lives. We have 
most of us a very clear recollection, probably, of events 
which happened in the year 1844 or 1845. The war in the 
Punjaub, and the Irish famine, which happened shortly 
afterwards, in 1846, and the great European events of 1848, 
some two years later, are fresh and \ivid in the memory of 
every person who has arrived at middle age. To others yet 
more advanced, an interval of five-and-twenty or thirty years 
can effect but little in effacing events or circumstances 
which at the time produced a deep and powerful impres- 
sion. They remember them as yesterday. So it must have 
been with many who were living at Corinth when the first 
Epistle to the Church there was written, and who read it on 
its arrival. But from this Epistle we know^ that more than 
250 persons who had seen the risen Jesus at one time were 
still alive and able to give their testimony to that effect. 
These persons, therefore, must have had as vivid a recollec- 
tion of the circumstance referred to, as we ourselves have of 
the battles on the Sutlej. The Queen's coronation is to us an 



I Cor. XV. 6. 
367 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



event farther in the background of the past than the vision of 
the crucified Jesus was to the 250 brethren who still survived. 
And the way in which their experience is mentioned is 
one which is the more striking because it is so casual. St. 
Paul alludes to it incidentally as a thing of which he had 
often spoken to the Corinthians. He could not have done 
so had this not been the case. They knew perfectly well 
that he had mentioned it to them. They had not forgotten 
that it formed a part of his oral communications. He could 
not have referred to it in this way had it not been so. But 
so neither is it possible that he could have spoken of the 
fact had the 250 witnesses been the mere invention of his 
own brain. Were there no shrewd men of common sense 
in the Church of Corinth who could have detected an im- 
position so gross as this, if it had been one ? Had there 
been even a small minority of such men, we should have 
had no second Epistle to the Corinthians, or the second 
Epistle would surely have been very different from what 
it is. We are obliged, in accepting the first Epistle to 
Corinth as the veritable work of St. Paul, to conclude 
that during his stay in that city he had habitually spoken of 
the fact, which none could call in question or deny, that 
there were living at that time more than 250 persons who 
had a distinct recollection of having seen Jesus Christ at 

some period less than six weeks after He had been cru- 

368 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



cified, 3uf who never saw Hi7n again. St. Paul not only- 
said this, but the whole Corinthian Church knew that what 
he said was true, for otherwise he would not in this way- 
have dared to say it. 

There is no occasion now to discuss the question what it 
was these people saw, because that would carry us far astray. 
All we need for the present insist upon is the fact that we 
have contemporary evidence of the very best kind, in the form, 
namely, of a genuine letter, that a large number of persons 
were still alive, say in the year of our Lord 58, who believed 
that they had seen a person, not merely as a spectre or vision, 
but as a living and substantial man, whom they knew to 
have been crucified and buried but a short time before, and 
who likewise knew that there were many more who could 
have corroborated their evidence on this point if they had 
not been dead. 

We fully admit, then, that this is a circumstance which 
is open to explanation in various ways, the true explanation 
being determinable upon other and additional considerations; 
but what we do maintain is that upon the premises conceded 
to us by the most rigid criticism, it is not possible to set aside 
the evidence on which it rests, be its explanation what it may. 

And here it is worth while asking, before we pass on, 
how we should feel ourselves justified in regarding the 
testimony of 500 persons now, not more credulous or weak- 

369 24 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



minded than ourselves, to an event which had passed under 
the cognisance of their own senses, even though that event 
were the posthumous appearance of a man who had been 
put to death as a malefactor ? Is it not certain that any- 
such supposed appearance would be calculated to make an 
impression on the beholders which might well last for five- 
and-twenty or thirty years, and should we not regard their 
uniform agreement in the matter as a very remarkable cir- 
cumstance imperatively demanding some solution ? 

The first point, then, which the existence of this Epistle 
establishes, is the fact that at the time it was written there 
were living many competent eye-witnesses of what was 
believed by them to have been the reanimation of a body 
which had been dead and buried, and that their testimony 
was accepted by a very large number of persons who 
implicitly believed it. Here, then, we have ™tten evi- 
dence to the effect that a particular event was amply testified 
and very generally believed upon the testimony. 

But, again, the same Epistle shows that this belief was 
by no means unquestioning. The very same chapter proves 
that there were those at Corinth who said there was no 
resurrection of the dead.* They did not believe, that is, 
in the doctrine that the dead will ultimately rise. They 
held no doubt in common with others that the resurrection 

* I Cor. XV. 12. 

370 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



was "past already; " that the change which had passed upon 
the Christian upon belief in Christ was so radical and so 
complete, that he might literally, without any violent figure of 
speech, be said to have risen again from the dead. They 
acquiesced so fully in the truth expressed by St. Paul in the 
second Epistle, " If any man be in Christ, he is a new 
creature,"* that the felt newness of that spiritual creation 
seemed to satisfy all their longings after life, and they rele- 
gated to the insignificance of a non-essential and a dreamy 
unreality the thought of a resurrection of the body yet to 
come. The way, then, in which the Apostle meets this 
form of unbelief is in the highest degree noteworthy. He 
argues from the known to the unknown, from what was 
believed to what was not believed, from what these early 
doubters implicitly accepted to that which they sceptically 
rejected. " Now, if Christ be preached that He rose from the 
dead, a?id ye believe if, how say some among you that there 
is no /z/Zz/r^ resurrection of the dead? For if there be no 
future resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen ? 
hit ye know and believe Hi7n to he risen, otherwise ye would 
not be what ye are." 

This, and nothing else than this, is the drift of the 
Apostle's argiunent. It shows us plainly, therefore, that there 
was a discriminating exercise of reason at work in men's 



* 2 Cor. V. 17. 
371 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



minds at Corinth. The struggle between reason and faith 
had landed them in a logical inconsistency. They rejected 
the future resurrection on what seemed to be rational 
grounds, because it appeared to them contrary to reason 
and experience, but they forgot that they had already sub- 
mitted their reason to a belief no less absolute and imperi- 
ous, which, if logically held, would stultify their scepticism. 

And there is no setting aside the inference from this 
argument, that the tendency of the mind which rejected the 
future resurrecfion was to reject likewise the personal resur- 
rection of the Lord Jesus, and the testimony of the greater 
part of the 500 brethren yet surviving who had seen Him 
after He was risen. That is to say, the character of the 
faith in the one case is enhanced by the scepticism in the 
other. Just as the belief of Thomas after his doubt, 
accepting for the sake of illustration the narrative in St. 
John,* was the stronger and more convincing because he 
had only adopted it upon conclusive evidence, so is the 
belief of the Corinthians in the resurrection of Jesus of the 
greater value evidentially, because we know it to have been 
their habit of mind not unquestioningly to believe. 

We arrive, then, at this further position that we may not 
lightly regard the belief of the Corinthian Church in the 

* For evidence as to the authenticity of this Gospel see the Boyle 
Lectures for 1870, " The witness of St. John to Christ." 

372 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



validity of the evidence for Christ's resurrection as the belief 
of persons who were credulous enough to believe anything. 
Upon fairly estimating all the circumstances, there is 
abundant and conclusive proof, which we may call con- 
temporary, that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus was 
believed in as a fact by a vast number of persons who were 
convinced they had received that fact upon ample or 
sufficient testimony. 

We must not forget, alsa, the nature of the fact that was 
believed. The resurrection of a dead body is so contrary 
to all reason and experience, that the difficulties- in the way 
of believing it may be estimated as practically equal in all 
cases. No one can profess to believe it without being fully 
conscious of the absurdity of that which he professes to 
believe. It is a point in which the imagination can scarcely 
hope to take the reason at a disadvantage, or at unawares. 
In only two ways is deception possible. First, on the sup- 
position of the unreality of the previous death ; and secondly, 
that the subsequent appearance was unreak Now in- the 
first case the notion of unreality is precluded, because it was 
firmly and universally believed, and not by Christians only, 
that Christ had died ; and there is no vestige of any evidence 
to show that He died in any other way than on the cross. 
This death was as needful an element in the creed of the Corin- 
thian Church as His resurrection, not to say that any true 

373 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



belief in His resurrection involved the belief in His death. 
It will not do to explain His supposed resurrection on the 
ground that His death was unreal. Where would have been 
the foolishness of the cross, if Christ had not died ? To 
secure the resurrection of Christ at the expense of His death 
would have been simply absurd, for two reasons : first, 
because that would have made the resurrection after all no 
resurrection — an unreality ; and secondly, because the death 
of Christ alone and by itself was a fact that was implicitly 
believed, and without which the faith of the Church cannot 
be conceived or comprehended. We are reduced, therefore, 
to the necessity of explaining the resurrection of Christ on 
the alternative supposition that the subsequent appearance 
was unreal. And here we are met by the transcendent 
difficulty, that it is antecedently in the highest degree im- 
probable that any sane man should be found to believe that 
the appearance of a person after death, w^ho had been cruci- 
fied and buried, could be other than imaginary and delusive. 
And we become, in fact, bound to determine whether 
in the abstract it is more improbable that multitudes of 
competent persons should believe in what was contradicted 
by universal experience, and especially by their own, or that 
something may have occurred which, in spite of themselves 
and their experience, had compelled them to this belief. 
For we must not fail to remember that the two sup- 

374 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



positions are mutually destructive. If Christ died, then the 
belief in His resurrection can only be explained on the 
theory that His subsequent appearance was unreal. If His 
subsequent appearance was unreal, then, to say the least, it 
is entirely gratuitous to deny the fact of His having died, be- 
cause if He did not truly die, there is no discoverable reason 
why His supposed appearance after death should not have 
been real. We may choose which explanation we deem pre- 
ferable. We cannot alternately or simultaneously adopt both. 
I am not now called upon to prove more than what is 
clearly proved, that the existence of this one Epistle as the 
genuine work of St. Paul affords abundant evidence that 
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead was accepted 
as a fact by large numbers of men, some of whom, at least, 
can only have accepted it on evidence which seemed to them 
sufficient to counteract the adverse testimony of their ex- 
perience, their reason, and their senses. And it is almost 
needless to observe that the belief in the resurrection as 
here depicted, involved also a belief in the burial '^ of Jesus 
Christ, in the main and essential features of His death,! that 
it was on the third day that He arose, | that His appearances 
after His resurrection were distinct and manifold, § and that 
the Apostle who depicted it had himself been among the 

* I Cor. XV. 4. J I Cor. xv, 4. 

f I Cor. xi. 27. § I Cor. xv. 5 — 8 

375 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



most vehement opponents of this very beUef in the person 
of the Lord, whose resurrection he proclaimed. ^ All this is 
established by the admission of this letter as genuine, and 
by the admission which cannot be denied, that the writer 
was giving a natural and plain statement of the truth, and 
not a fabricated or ideal narrative of fictitious occurrences. 

That is to say, so far the testimony of this Epistle is in 
conformity with the framework of the Gospel history. If 
the four Gospels were lost to us, the life, and death, and 
resurrection of Jesus Christ would still remain firmly and 
distinctly imbedded in the original faith of the Corinthian 
Church. We know from this letter that less than thirty 
years after the death of Christ, there was a very large body 
of men at Corinth who believed implicitly that He had risen 
from the dead, and that they knew that many persons were 
still alive who were eye-witnesses of the fact. 

I ask you, then, very carefully to observe that this does not 
prove the fact. It only shows us conclusively that less than 
thirty years after the fact there were many persons who 
believed in it as such. 

And let us put a parallel case. Suppose a person coming 
CO London in the present day, and declaring that less than 
thirty years ago a certain man in a distant country who had 
been put to death as a malefactor, had risen from the dead 

* I Cor. XV. 9. 



376 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



the third day, and was still a^.ive. What success think you 
would he meet with? Most assuredly there would not be 
half-a-dozen people who would believe him. But if, on the 
contrary, a new society should be formed, consisting exclu- 
sively of persons professing to believe all this, would not 
the circumstance be so remarkable as to lead us to infer 
that there must be some adequate cause for it ? If the per- 
sons professing this belief were of all stations and classes, 
and many of them, as is proved by this Epistle, men of 
intelligence and discernment, should we not be constrained 
to confess that the only reasonable supposition was that there 
was something in the evidence which could not be lightly set 
aside ? However strange and mysterious the tale might be, 
it could not be altogether a cunningly devised fable. There 
must be something at the bottom of it. No effect can exist 
without an adequate cause. Here is clear evidence of a 
very considerable effect existing. What was the cause of it ? 
The cause alleged would doubtless be a sufficient cause, for 
truth is not only stranger, but mightier than fiction. And 
it may be fairly questioned v/hether, under all the circum- 
stances, any other cause can be discovered which would be 
sufficient. There is so far, therefore, an antecedent pro- 
bability that the cause alleged was the true cause. 

Again, it is to be observed throughout all these Epistles of 
St. Paul that the resurrection of Christ was to him not a 

377 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



past influence, but a present power. If the evidence of the 
first Epistle to Corinth is less than thirty years after the 
death of Christ, the evidence of the second carries us back 
to nearly half that time. The writer speaks of himself as 
being in Christ more than fourteen years before.* This 
brings us virtually to not more than a dozen or fifteen years 
from the actual occurrence of the resurrection ; and in all 
probability the Epistle to the Galatians carries us back even 
further still. Critics ai*e divided as to the computation of 
the time mentioned in it. But if the " fourteen years after" 
of chap. ii. are to be added to the '' three years " after 
which Paul " went up to Jerusalem to see Peter," then the 
whole period can be little less than twenty, and the extreme 
limit refeiTcd to scarcely more than ten years after the 
resurrection.t At that time, then, St. Paul himself fully and 
implicitly believed in it. At that time he had made great 
sacrifices for his belief in it. At that time, or shortly after, 
he had not improbably suffered privation and persecution 
because of it. But the faith which he held then he is found 
holding as tenaciously as ever fourteen or twenty years after- 
wards, holding it, in fact, so tenaciously that he is able to 
bring many others to share it with him. A man must be 
something more than an enthusiast who for fourteen years 
could retain a conviction so monstrous as this, if false, and 
* 2 Cor. xii. 2. f I Gal, ii. i, and i. i8. 



ST. PA UnS EPISTLES. 



at the end of that time could make more converts than 
before. Surely this is not the ordinary experience of man- 
kind, that it is so easy to get men to believe as a fact, con- 
tradicting their own experience, what after all is no fact at 
all. It is one thing to win converts to our opinions or our 
principles., and quite another to gain credence for 2, fact that 
it is every one's interest to disprove. 

For at that time what secondary advantage could there be 
in the profession of a faith which was universally despised, 
and which exposed its more prominent votaries to imminent 
peril, as the eleventh chapter of the second letter to Corinth 
abundantly shows. It is obvious that at fifteen years after 
the death of Christ many of the 500 brethren who were 
afterwards dead were still alive, and it is not too much to 
infer that St Paul, from the position he held in the Church, 
was personally acquainted with many or most of them. He 
therefore personally must have had numerous opportunities 
of amply satisfying himself as to the truth of the fact which 
he proclaimed so persistently. But still it is evident that it 
possessed for him a power and an influence totally different 
from that of any ordinary occurrence or event. It was not 
the Christ who once rose, but the Christ who was risen that 
he proclaimed. His first rising from the grave was the 
work of a distinct moment of time. The influence of which 
He thereby revealed Himself as the centre and source was 

379 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



continuous and inexhaustible. It was this influence which 
the Apostle felt in his life. He could tell the Galatians in 
language it would be impossible to counterfeit, " I am 
crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the 
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, 
and gave Himself for me."* A declaration such as this 
is worth volumes of evidence ; it is its own evidence ; it 
bubbles up clear and sparkling from the very fountain and 
well-head of truth. No man could have said it who did not 
feel it, and no man could have felt it, and not known that 
what he felt was an intense reality, defying all explanation 
except on the hypothesis that the central core of it was 
truth, and not falsehood. If an influence thus operating on 
the life was derived from the death and resurrection of 
Jesus Christ, there must have been something very unusual 
in that death, and something more than a mistake or an 
illusion in that rising again to set such a force in operation. 
No other man's death would produce the same effect, (who 
cares for the death of Socrates ?) and no other man's resur- 
rection, whether alleged or proved, could do so ; but if this 
man's death and resurrection did produce it, as it plainly 
did, then the result speaks for itself The Epistle to the 
Galatians, though written more than eighteen centuries ago, 

* Gal. ii. 20. 

380 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



is a standing witness to it. There is no wonder that such 
an influence was felt then in every part of the known world, 
and especially in the centres of its life, such as Rome and 
Corinth, because we cannot but feel it now ; and a principle 
so instinct with life cannot but be superior to and inde- 
pendent of the power of death. Here is the present power of 
the resurrection acting concurrently with the mass of cumu- 
lative evidence converging in the point when it was an event 
of actual history, and combining therewith to show the 
truth of it. Nothing can prove more conspicuously the 
strength of this influence in the personal life of St. Paul 
than his great Epistle to the Romans. Everywhere Christ is 
present with him as an energising power, which is vastly more 
than a mere memory of the past, and is a vital and potent 
agency still in operation. He did indeed die unto sin once, 
but evermore He liveth unto God.* The gift of God is 
eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who was de- 
clared to be the Son of God with power according to the 
spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.t 

But what is not the least remarkable feature about the 
Epistle to the Romans is the fact that it was written to a 
Church of which St. Paul was personally ignorant. He had 
never been at Rome. It is evident, however, that there 
were many Christians there. These Christians were not his 
* Rom. vi. lo. f Rom. vi. 23 ; i. 3, 4, 

381 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



converts. He says he had had a great desire for many 
years to come unto them.* Then there had been Christians 
at Rome for many years. The many can be scarcely less 
than ten or a dozen ; but if so, this brings us again to little 
more than fifteen years after the death of Christ. We find, 
however, these Christians professing identically the same 
belief in the same person and the same facts as St. Paul 
himself. They also believed in a Jesus Christ who had been 
crucified, and who had been raised from the dead. How 
they came to believe in Him we cannot tell. It is plain they 
did believe in Him. It is also probable in the highest 
degree, nay, it is impossible but that many of them from 
whom they received their faith, had either been eye-wit- 
nesses, or companions of eye-witnesses of the life of Jesus 
Christ. At any rate, it is obvious that the substantial frame- 
work of belief was identical with that which w^as current 
among the Churches of Galatia, and in the Church at Corinth. 
A man who had been crucified and risen again, was the 
centre of their hope, their affection, their joy, their confi- 
dence. In Him they all felt they were supernaturally united 
in a supernatural life; and as their knowledge of Christ 
was altogether independent of St. Paul's preaching, it 
possesses the value of independent testimony, and presents 
an additional amount of difficulty in the face of any attempt 

* Rom. XV. 23. 
3S2 



ST. PAUnS EPISTLES. 



to account for the belief in Christ's resurrection on the 
hypothesis of some error or deception. However unrea- 
sonable it was to attempt to account for it in that way 
at Corinth, the difficulty becomes greater when the case 
of Rome is added to that of Corinth. Here the personal 
influence of the enthusiastic Paul is removed, and yet the 
results produced are manifestly undistinguishable. Their 
faith had been spoken of throughout the whole world,* and 
it was faith in a crucified and risen Jesus; a faith which 
they as Gentiles were not ashamed to profess in the Jew 
Christ Jesus, and to be confirmed in by the Jew Saul of 
Tarsus. There is something very remarkable in these re- 
sults. How many national and personal prejudices must 
have been overcome ; how many rooted and inherent 
animosities must have been eradicated ; how much stubborn 
pride must have been bent and mortified ; and how many 
acute sensibilities deadened, before results such as these 
could have been obtained. And what was it all for ? No 
earthly advantage had been or was likely to be secured. 
No hope of visible reward was ofifered. Simply the loss 
of self-respect, in having believed what was only a gross 
absurdity if it was not the truth, was incurred. The know- 
ledge that under any circumstances their temporal condition 
would have been far better if they had never heard of Christ 

* Rom. i. 8. 

3S3 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



Jesus ; that the behef in His name could give them neither 
lands nor houses, but only lay upon them additional hin- 
drances in the way of gratifying their natural inclinations, 
only expose them more and more to the hatred and con- 
tempt of men. If in this life only they had hope in Christ, 
they were of all men most miserable ; there was no one 
redeeming point, no one compensating advantage. They 
had believed a lie, and they were all the worse for it. 
These two points at least are clear : that they thought 
it no lie, and that under the circumstances they must 
have been strangely constituted, if, being a lie, it had 
the power to sustain them as it did. 

For observe, connected with the faith of Christ there was 
not even the gratification of flattered vanity in the case of 
these first believers. There is an intelligible pleasure that 
a man can find nowadays in constituting himself the 
apostle of unbelief. There is the promise of a certain 
intellectual glory in the effort to overthrow an ancient faith 
like that of Christianity. The hope of possible triumph is 
dazzling. There is a pleasure in seeming to be so much 
wiser than so many others, in having outstripped the accu- 
mulated wisdom of ages, in being the pioneer of intellectual 
emancipa-tion, the harbinger of light that has emerged from 
every trace of religious darkness, the forerunner of the 
downfall of superstitious prejudices, the demolition of the 

3S4 



ST. FAUrS EPISTLES. 



last and oldest of the creeds. There is something to attract 
the imagination in all this, something to foster a self-com- 
placent estimate of self, together with a kind of malevolent 
joy in indulging the passion of destructiveness. But what 
was there to flatter the vanity in the belief of a proclamation 
which was foolishness to the Greeks ? What was there to 
exalt the intellect, or to magnify the self, in the doctrine of 
Christ crucified ? We do not deny that it was possible for 
the self to enter in and mix even with the doctrine of the 
cross ; but it could only do so as a principle that was fatally 
antagonistic to it. The two could not co-exist; one must 
destroy the other. The belief that a crucified malefactor 
had risen in triumph from the grave, was subversive of 
everything calculated to honour the intellect, or to please 
the natural desire of man to worship and admire himself. 
There was no harvest to be reaped from belief in the Cruci- 
fied on this score. We are at a loss to discover in any one 
point what secondary motive can, with any show of proba- 
bility, be attributed to the first believers, as predisposing 
them to their belief, if the motive was not a simple and 
sincere conviction of its truth. And yet if so, the diffi- 
culty becomes still greater in assuming that what they be- 
lieved was not the truth, but a flagrant He. For it must 
ever be remembered that it is an assumption after all. It is 
certainly not less difficult to prove in the face of all the evi- 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



dence that Christ did not rise, than it is to prove upon that 
evidence that He did. If the result of the whole argument 
in the one case is 2, presimiption, it most assuredly is not le.-.? 
so in the other. 

Once more, it cannot for one moment be asserted that the 
Epistle to the Romans originated in any way the faith which 
it assumes. It is absurd to suppose that an unknown man 
merely on the credit of his reputation could have substan- 
tially modified the belief of a particular Church by simply 
inditing a letter to it. The state of things assumed at Rome, 
and the faith depicted in the Epistle to the Romans, are only 
intelligible on the supposition that they are true. It is obvious 
that the body of the writer's faith was substantially identical 
with that of those to whom he was writing. Both were 
attached to a particular person whom they believed to be 
the Son of God, who had been crucified, dead, and buried, 
had risen again, and was then sitting at the right hand of God 
as an intercessor.* And more than that, both believed that 
this person was the giver of a new Spirit which influenced 
both, and animated all believers, and made them all one, and 
was not only the evidence to them of the actual truth and re- 
surrection of Christ, but was also the pledge that they them- 
selves were accepted in a new relation to God by Christ, t 
This gift of the new Spirit was the invisible bond between 

■= Rom. i. 4; vi. 6—9; viii. 34. f Rom. viii. 14, 16, 17. 

386 



ST. FA UnS EPISTLES. 



them and Christ, between them and one another, between 
them and the Macedonian Christians, between them and the 
brethren of Corinth, between them and St. Paul himself. 

Nothing the least like this Spirit had been known before 
in their own experience or in that of the ages past. It was 
a new phenomenon which they felt, and saw, and acknow- 
ledged, and could not deny. Now the eighth chapter of the 
Epistle to the Romans contains incontrovertible proof of the 
operation of this Spirit. No letters from Paul could have 
made the Christians at Rome imagine they were influenced 
by it. We can see for ourselves that it was not less familiar 
to them than it was to him. No message of his had made 
it familiar to them. Years before they had known it, although 
from whom they had received it none can tell, but it is per- 
fectly certain that a condition of belief like that at Rome 
could not have been the work of a day. It must have taken 
time to grow. And yet at the same time it is no less clear 
that it was a product of the existing generation. There was 
not one of those to whom the Apostle wrote who had not in 
his own being the consciousness of a prior condition of un- 
belief. Many of them had probably been defiled with some 
of the dark catalogue of crimes enumerated in the first 
chapter, but they had been justified by faith, and had found 
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Clirist* They 

* Rom. V. I. 
387 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



knew this; they were conscious of the double experience; 
they could compare the one with the other. The Apostle's 
letter had not originated these experiences of their conscious- 
ness : it had reflected and expressed them. The notion of 
the Epistle to the Romans being an imaginary letter written 
under imaginary circumstances to imaginary persons, de- 
scribing imaginary incidents and imaginary feelings, is too 
monstrously preposterous to be for one moment entertained. 
It has preserved the real and irresistible evidence of a vast 
spiritual influence at work among a large body of men which 
was precisely contemporaneous with one event — their belief, 
namely, in the resurrection of a man who had been crucified 
in Palestine. 

Now it must be admitted that in this alone and by 
itself, if it was not true, there is nothing that can be 
discovered which is adequate to the production of results 
so remarkable. When it is asserted that the death of Jesus 
Christ is surpassed in excellence and sublimity by any other 
death, the one question that suggests itself is. If this be so, how 
is it that the results which followed that death were not more 
remarkable than or so remarkable as those which followed the 
death of Jesus ? This is a simple fact that no criticism or 
scepticism can destroy, that the preaching of the death and 
resurrection of Jesus Christ in the first thirty years afterwards 
did produce results, as testified by these Epistles, which are 

388 



ST. PAUnS EPISTLES. 



simply unparalleled in the history of the world. If the death 
was not a real death, or the resurrection not a true resurrec- 
tion, then the responsibility must rest upon us of discover- 
ing some other explanation sufficient to account for effects 
which are too palpable to be ignored, and can assuredly be 
accounted for on this supposition, but have not yet been 
adequately accounted for on any other. 

It is no part of my present design, and time would fail 
me, to enlarge upon all the points in which the history of 
the Gospels is confirmed by these Epistles. I am not now 
concerned to establish the credibility of the Gospels, but 
only the general credibility of the Gospel history ; and 
therefore it may suffice to say that we find St. Paul and 
the Romans believing that Jesus Christ *' vi^as made of 
the seed of David according to the flesh," * an admission 
which, coming from the pupil of Gamaliel, who must 
have had the requisite technical information, is very re- 
markable ; but " separated as the Son of God with power," 
, which is at least consistent with our Gospel narrative, 
that makes Him the Son of God, but born of a virgin, 
and especially characterised during His ministry by mira- 
culous powers ; that in each of these Epistles the custom 
of baptism is expressly mentioned or implied j t that if the 

• Rom. i. 3, 4. 

t Rom. vi. 3 ; I Cor. i. 13 ; Gal. iii. 27 j cf. 2 Cor. i. 22. 

389 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



origin of this rite is not directly to be referred to the insti- 
tution of Christ, as recorded in the Gospels, we are alto- 
gether ignorant of its origin; that the practice of it was 
clearly universal, which is so far consistent with the belief 
that it was derived from the express command of Christ ; 
that in the first Epistle to the Corinthians * the writer speaks 
of Jesus Christ taking bread the same night that He was 
betrayed^ and blessing it, and speaks of it in terms almost 
identical with those of the Gospels, thus showing not only 
that the death of Christ, but that the main circumstances of 
His death were commonly known, and the record of them so 
far unvarying, and that consequently the supposition of any 
great or substantial divergence is precluded; that the por- 
trait of Jesus which all recognised was, in all its principal and 
important features, identical with that which we recognise 
now; and that, therefore, as the existence of some Gospels 
is, under the circumstances, a matter of necessity, the 
question is not so much whether our Gospels are true, as 
whether there are any others which can be regarded as 
truer and more trustworthy. 

And when we bear in mind that at this time the interval 
of thirty years had not yet elapsed since the death of Christ, 
we can partly estimate the possibility of dim or uncertain 
recollection in the case of events so clearly defined, and so 

* I Cor. xi. 23. 
390 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



simple, and so important, by the freshness with which we 
ourselves remember other events more complicated that 
have happened within a similar period of time. There is, 
moreover, clear evidence that at the date of these Epistles 
two practices were universal in the Church — those, namely, 
of baptising converts, and of commemorating what was 
called the Lord's Supper. These practices must have had 
a commencement, and have had an origin. The period of 
thirty years, before which there is no trace of the second, 
even if the first existed in other forms, is too short a time 
for their origin to have been forgotten, or for the practice of 
them to have become materially modified. But the com- 
memoration of the Lord's Supper is unmeaning, except in 
connection with the death of Christ, and St. Paul declared, 
" As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do 
show the Lord's death till He come; ""^ and whatever relation 
there may have been between baptism as practised by the 
Jews or by John the Baptist, and Christian baptism, it is 
certain that baptism in the name of Jesus is unintelligible, 
except on the supposition of His having risen from the dead, 
or having in some way established His claim to be the Son 
of God, or the founder of a new society. St. Paul, however, 
distinctly says that Christ sent him " not to baptise, but to 
preach the Gospel,"! as though He had sent others to do 
* I Cor. xi. 26. t I Cor. i. 17. 

Z9^ 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE 01 



both ; or at any irate, had sent others to baptise. The pre- 
valence, therefore, of these significant practices, which is 
clearly traceable less than thirty years after the death of 
Christ, is well-nigh equivalent to contemporary evidence, 
both as to their origin and to the reality of the events they 
signified. If Christ had been a shadow, or a myth, or a mere 
crystallised idea, it is absolutely impossible that we should 
have the kind of evidence we have as to the universality of 
these practices. We can account for them on no theory but 
the express command of Christ, which must have been sub- 
stantially identical with that recorded in the Gospels. 

It is perfectly clear, therefore, that the known writings of 
St. Paul coritain incontrovertible evidence of the whole 
framework of the life of Christ, which was the basis of the 
Christian faith less than thirty years after His death. They 
show us the existence of a large and organised society, 
which was held together solely by the attachment of its 
members to His person ; and which, but for faith in Him, 
would have had no existence at all. This society was noto- 
rious for the profession and the practice of a very high 
morality, such as had never before been seen, and can never 
be surpassed, — at least, it is such a morality these Epistles 
inculcate. The occurrence of one or two flagrant breaches 
of this morality in the Church at Corinth, only serves as a 
foil to what was, beyond all question, its general standard ; 

392 



ST. FAUrS EPISTLES. 



but, in addition to this, there were other features in it of a 
wholly exceptional and unprecedented character. One of 
these was what we may call, for want of a better name, its 
unworldliness. Every one must feel that there is that in the 
writings of St. Paul which is distasteful to the common 
humanity of the world. It is as if a new sense had been 
suddenly created, and the writer was bent upon satisfying it. 
The whole range of sympathies and requirements and tastes 
is new. It is not a natural thing for men to care about 
communion with Jesus, or prayer to God, or participation in 
the Holy Spirit, to have hearts overflowing with gratitude to 
the Divine Being for having redeemed them, for adopting 
them into His family, and making them partakers of the 
holiness of His own nature. However this is to be accounted 
for — if it can be accounted for — it was not then, and is not 
now, a condition of mind natural to man. Now, take away 
the expression of these feelings, and the letters of St. Paul 
come to an end, and the occasion for writing them comes 
to an end, and the existence of the society for which they 
were written comes to an end. But as the letters exist, the 
occasion for writing them must have existed, and the society 
for which they were written must have existed ; and none of 
these things can have existed without a sufficient and analo- 
gous cause. They are inseparably connected with the 
preaching of Jesus and the beUef in His name. Take away 

393 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



these two things, and they would not have existed at all. 
But their very existence is a proof at the same time that they 
can only have made their way in opposition to the prevailing 
tendencies of human nature, because they cherished and 
exhibited a condition of mind which is foreign to the natural 
tastes and inclinations of mankind. There is internal 
evidence, therefore, in the writings of St. Paul that the faith 
which he preached had only succeeded, wherever it was suc- 
cessful, by triumphing over much that was naturally and 
fatally opposed to it ; thus showing that we cannot refer 
to any natural causes the success of a scheme of religious 
belief which w^as itself contrary to nature, and is still felt 
to be contrary to nature. 

But there is another feature, wholly exceptional and 
unprecedented, which characterised the new society ; the 
evidence for which is too distinct to be set aside or 
explained away — the first Epistle to Corinth affords con- 
clusive proof of the existence of miraculous gifts in the 
Church there. These gifts were of various kinds ; the most 
mysterious of them being the gift of tongues. Whatever 
this was, it is sufficiently clear that it was over-estimated, and 
that it was abused. The possessors of it were puffed up on 
account of it. They were disposed to prefer it before 
charity, and the less obtrusive gifts of the Spirit. We can 
only conclude, therefore, that this gift was a reality which 

394 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



was acknowledged and envied by others, but a reality like- 
wise which was peculiar to the Church, and which was limited 
to the area of belief in Christ. Now we must not assume 
that the possession of this gift was miraculous ; all we may 
insist upon is the validity of the evidence that it was real, 
and of this the fourteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the 
Corinthians presents incontestable proof, and consequently 
the existence of this gift is a distinguishing characteristic of 
the effects which followed the original profession of the faith 
of Jesus. Not only was the standard of moraHty raised by 
it, not only were new dispositions awakened by it, and new 
capacities and tastes created, and new desires and hopes 
implanted, not only were the original propensities, in- 
clinations, and antipathies of nature resisted, thwarted, 
and overcome ; but in addition to this, there is a plain 
evidence of new powers and endowments being conferred 
upon the first believers concurrently with their belief in 
Christ. Now it is obviously impossible that delusion can 
have operated in all these cases ; but unless it did, the mul- 
tiplicity and combination of them supply no inconsiderable 
confirmation of the reality of that event, the belief in which 
was the very basis of their existence. Multitudes believed- 
in the fact that Christ had risen from the dead, and the 
profession of that belief was followed by one or other of 
these results. A great change was wrought in numerous 

395 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



instances which was unprecedented in the experience of the 
individual, and which could find no counterpart in the 
experience of the heathen world ; and if the results which 
followed the proclamation of a fact were conspicuously so 
real, is it possible that the fact itself was less so ? For there 
is only one alternative — if the cause producing these results 
was not a fact — namely, that belief in a particular event which 
was not a fact, produced them. In other words, not only 
was the faith of the early Church self-originated, but more- 
over, all the phenomena of its existence were the product of 
that which itself had no existence. 

We need not fear to admit that a very strong conviction 
may suffice to produce considerable results, even though the 
conviction may be based upon a falsehood ; but we may well 
question whether all the results here manifested, combined, 
could have been produced by mere belief in the resurrection 
of a man whose resurrection was not a fact. What was there 
in -this belief, supposing it to have been based upon a lie, 
which could have wrought so pow^erfuUy and so generally on 
the minds of men as it did ? Could such a belief have made 
them morally new, have made them willing to encounter 
shame and contempt, and endowed them with powers which 
rendered them the objects of envy to their fellow-believers ? 
If we think it could, we must still confess that a combination 
of circumstances like these, taken all together, is so excep- 

396 



ST, PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



tional as to be virtually without a parallel in the history of 
the world. 

There is, however, another point in the Epistles of St. 
Paul which deserves our notice when estimating their value 
as evidence, and that is the witness they afford us of his own 
altered feelings with regard to Christ. He speaks, in his letter 
to the Galatians, of having been formerly a devoted Jew, and 
having persecuted the Church of God and laid it waste."* If 
we had no other evidence than this, it would be sufficient. 
There is no reason to doubt what the Apostle says. He had 
been a bitter enemy of Christ. But there is no evidence what- 
ever that while he was thus hostile to Christ he had ever believed 
His death and His resurrection to have been an unreality. 
Had he disbelieved in these events as facts, it is more than 
probable that some trace of such disbelief would have escaped 
him in his writings. But it is not so. The death of Christ 
was manifestly a notorious fact which neither he nor any one 
cared to deny. The resurrection of Christ, though perhaps 
received more questioningly, was nevertheless put by or 
explained away rather than actually denied. The tradition 
mentioned at the end of St. Matthew's Gospel, as commonly 
reported among the Jews,t is probably a fair sample of the 
indolent spirit in which the story of Christ's resurrection was 
met by them, and, perhaps, regarded by Saul of Tarsus. In 

* Gal. i. 13, t St. Matt, xxviii. 15, 

397 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



his own case it was not so much that he disbeUeved these 
things as facts, as that he was ignorant of their power. The 
death of Christ was no more to him than the death of any 
one else. The resurrection of Christ was to him nothing 
more than an idle Christian tale. He disregarded both 
rather because of the principles associated with them than 
because of their intrinsic falsehood. But the time came 
when it was otherwise. " It pleased God, who separated 
him from his mother's womb, and called him by His grace to 
reveal His Son in him."'^ He then found that the man whose 
death he had known as a fact, though not as a power, was 
intimately connected with himself, that he had a share in His 
death, and had been crucified wdth Him, and the resurrection, 
which had been to him before but as an idle tale, he now 
found to be the unfailing source of a new spiritual life to him. 
This was probably m^ore than twenty years before he wrote 
any one of these Epistles. If we place his escape from Damas- 
cus under Aretas in the year of our Lord 39, this will bring 
his conversion to the year of our Lord 36. Now, I ask you 
notice this date very carefully. It is as late as we can 
well fix the conversion of Saul ; some have fixed it much 
earlier. But supposing it to have happened as late as a.d. 2)^, 
this was but five or at the most six years after the death of 
Jesus Christ, which happened in a.d. 30, or, as I beHeve, in 

• Gal. i. 15, 16. 
398 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



A.D. 31. Now, if the death of Christ was an unreality, He 
would in all probability at that time have been still alive, as 
He would not yet have been forty years old, and His death 
by natural means was not likely to have occurred. But 
conceive for one moment the impossible absurdity of 
the conversion of Saul taking place and the active life 
of the Christian Church going on for many years while 
Christ, who was supposed to have died upon the cross, was 
actually living in obscurity in some unknown corner of 
the world. The idea is simply preposterous. The sup- 
position of Christ not having died as He was believed to 
have died is too impossible to be maintained. 

If we have got Christ's death then as a positive historical 
fact which is unquestionable, we have a platform of reality on 
which to rear our superstructure of evidence for the reality 
of His resurrection. If Christ did not truly rise, there is one 
very important question to be answered which has not been, 
and which never will be answered, namely — What became of 
His dead body ? The production of that dead body by the 
enemies of Christ would have been absolutely fatal to all the 
preaching and the faith of the Christians; the Christian 
Church would have been effectually stifled in its very birth. 
I should not now, after an interval of almost nineteen cen- 
turies, be lecturing in St. George's Hall on the evidences of 
Christianity if the dead body of Christ had been produced, 

399 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



and yet nothing, surely, would have been easier for His 
enemies to do. If, then, the disciples stole Him away from 
the sepulchre while the soldiers slept, and so made away 
with the body, we must admit that these Epistles of St. Paul, 
which at least are unrivalled in the literature of the world, and 
which cannot again be produced at will, owe their origin to 
a deliberate lie ; and that after an interval of five-and-twenty 
years, which might have sufficed for it to have been success- 
fully exposed. And we must confess that one of the most 
distinguished and highly educated of the Jews of that time, 
who himself had been a violent persecutor of the Christians, 
was induced against his will, and apparently not by Chris- 
tian influence, to connive at this collusion or become the 
victim of it, and that in such a way as to ruin all his worldly 
prospects, to entail upon him years of hardship, and to inspire 
him, or at least to leave him, after almost a quarter of a 
century, with all the tact, wisdom, and discretion which are 
so conspicuous in his letters to the Churches at Rome and 
Corinth. Verily this supposition is absolutely precluded by 
the very nature of the case. 

There remains then but one other to be advanced, and 
that is this. The primitive Christians and St. Paul himself 
were alike the victims of delusion. The testimony of the 
f rst disciples was based upon an error. The vision which 
had arrested Saul on his journey to Damascus, and changed 

400 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



the whole current of his Hfe, was nothing more than the 
hallucination of a sunstroke. The preaching in which he 
passed so many years of his life, and breasted so much resist- 
ance, was only an infatuation; the hope, and peace, and joy 
of which his letters are so full, and which had taken perma- 
nent possession of him upon belief in Christ, were all a lie. ' 
He had sacrificed himself for nothing, he had toiled and 
suffered for nought. He had thrown away his life for a 
dream. We do not deny that such a position is conceivable; 
but we do deny that the letters of St. Paul give evidence of 
it. Had the resurrection of Christ been merely a delusion, 
the Epistles to Rome, Corinth, and Galatia are not the kind 
of fruits we should have expected it to produce after so long 
an interval; nay, there is room for the gravest possible doubt 
whether, being a delusion, it could have produced them. 

This, then, is our standing ground. We do not assume 
that St. Paul was inspired. We do not say that his writings 
are authoritative or binding upon our faith. We take up no 
such position. We take only what we find — the genuine 
letters of an early convert to Christ, which were certainly 
written less than thirty years after the death of Christ, which 
contain internal evidence on the part of their writer to his 
belief in the central facts they proclaim, at an interval of little 
more than five years after those facts occurred. We treat 
these letters as the natural productions of any ordinary man. 

40I 26 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



We deduce from them only such evidence as we should de- 
duce from the letters of Cicero, or anyone else. We do not 
affirm that they are in any way supernatural, but we say that 
they supply conclusive evidence to the very wide-spread 
belief in centres of life so far removed as Rome, Corinth, 
and Galatia, in a supernatural fact less than thirty years after 
it occurred. We do not say that this wide-spread beliet 
proves the fact to have occurred ; but we do say that if the 
fact really did occur, it would account for the belief, and we 
do say that taking all the circumstances into consideration 
there is at least room for the very gravest possible doubt 
whether had it not occurred, the phenomena we witness 
would have been presented. Given the resurrection, and 
St. Paul's Epistles are explained ; deny the resurrection, and 
you cannot account for them. Given the resurrection, and 
St. Paul's own character is the natural consequence of it, 
St. Paul's conversion its natural product ; deny the resurrec- 
tion, and he is the greatest of all inconsistencies, and his 
conversion, with its effects, the most inexplicable of all 
enigmas. 

And here we might be content to leave the case, con- 
fident that we have not overstrained it, and confident in its 
own intrinsic soundness and inherent strength, for the more 
the character, the history, and the writings of St. Paul are 
fairly studied, the more disciples they will win to Christ ; 

402 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



but it may, perhaps, be expedient to notice briefly one or 
two points in their bearing on this position. It will, of 
course, be said that no amount of belief in a fact will prove it 
to have been a fact, which is obviously true. The resurrection, 
if a fact, is a miraculous fact, so far removed from the limits 
of ordinary experience and natural law as to be well-nigh 
sufficient to cover almost any contradiction of the one, or 
any violation of the other. It is no part of my present 
business to discuss the question to what extent a belief in 
miracles is defensible; that has already been done in a 
previous lecture of this course ; but I may make this obser- 
vation, that, granting the actual occurrence of a miracle like 
the resurrection, there are those to whom it would be im- 
possible to prove it by any testimony whatever. Nay, there 
are those who would not believe it on the evidence of their 
own senses, or, at least, who say so. Any demonstration, 
therefore, of a miracle, even if it could be demonstrated, 
would be clearly useless for them. It would, of course, on 
this hypothesis, fail to reach them. Now, we may concede 
at once that Christianity is wholly unable to offer any such 
demonstration ; nay, we may go further, and say that if it 
could, it would be no nearer to the overcoming of such op- 
position. But let it be observed that the existence of such 
opposition by no means proves the evidences of Christianity 
to be unsatisfactory or unsound. The person who declares 

403 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



that he would not believe a miracle like the resurrection 
even though he were himself the witness of it, is not likely 
to believe it on the testimony of a second person, be he 
never so trustworthy, even if it had actually occurred. And 
this is a fact that deserves to be borne in mind, because so 
far from showing that the evidences of the great Christian 
miracle are inadequate, it rather shows the absolute impossi- 
bility of their being adequate to meet successfully the case 
in point. It rather concedes the strength of those evidences, 
from mere eagerness to affirm that nothing could make 
them strong enough. 

But, besides this, it must be remembered that, granting 
the reality of a miracle like the resurrection, it is obvious 
that, having been witnessed by a limited number of wit- 
nesses, it must necessarily be dependent afterwards for its 
acceptance upon testimony. On the supposition of its 
actual occurrence, a few only could receive it upon ocular 
demonstration, and the vast majority of mankind, if they 
received it, could only do so upon the testimony of others. 
It is therefore clearly conceivable on the hypothesis that 
many who rejected it might do so in direct contravention of 
the truth. Indeed, all who rejected it must do so. 

Because, then, there are found those who reject the evi- 
dence of the resurrection of Christ, it by no means follows 

they have not done so in contravention of the fact. The 

404 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



question really is not whether there is still left any possible 
room for doubt — for that we have seen there always must 
be — but whether the existing testimony is sufficiently un- 
broken, and sufficiently uniform, and sufficiently valid, to be 
reasonably conclusive. And on this point the known Epis- 
tles of St. Paul are singularly clear. They witness to the 
fact of five hundred persons having seen the risen Jesus at 
one time, of the universal acceptance of belief in the resur- 
section, so that neither in the Churches of Rome, Corinth, 
or Galatia, does there seem to have been a single Christian 
who doubted it. They witness to the fact that St. Paul 
himself had lived in familiar intercourse with Peter,- James, 
and others, who had known the Lord, and that he had 
originally joined the Christian body at the most six or seven 
years after the resurrection, when he must have had abun- 
dant opportunities of testing the validity of its evidence, 
and when it would have been impossible for him to have 
given in his allegiance to an event so contrary to his 
experience, except upon conclusive proof. 

Bearing in mind that under any circumstances some must 
content themselves with belief on testimony, it is difficult 
to conceive of any testimony which could be more convinc- 
ing or more satisfactory than that of this Apostle ; especially 
seeing that he was at the first a violent persecutor of the 
faith he preached ; that he must have had ample means of 

405 



THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF 



sifting the evidence on which it rested ; and, because, Hving at 
the time he did, so near to the death of Christ, that which his 
testimony loses in the matter of personal eye-witness it more 
than gains, all things considered, in the matter of deliberate 
conviction and devoted lifelong service. 

That is to say, the conversion of the persecutor Saul of 
Tarsus is itself a wondrous evidence of the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ. The letters of the Apostle are the expression 
of his mature belief ; but at the time when that belief was 
formed he must have had ample means of knowing how far 
he had follow^ed a cunningly devised fable, and how far that 
which he believed was truth and was no lie. 

Lastly, it maybe said, If the evidence for Christ's resurrec- 
tion was so satisfactory when it was first proclaimed, why was 
it not universally believed ? To this w^e may answer. Why 
w^as Paul the Apostle at any period of his history Saul the 
persecutor ? or Why were there any that believed if there were 
some who doubted ? It is gratuitous to affirm that the want 
of universality on the one side is more remarkable than on the 
other. We can only say that faith is the great touchstone of 
man's moral nature. To the end of time it will be true that 
some will believe the things that are spoken, and some be- 
lieve them not.* Why are there now any intelligent and able 
men who believe in Christ's resurrection if it is absolute folly 

* Acts xxviiL 24. 
406 



ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 



to believe in it ? That it is not folly to believe in it we can 
show to demonstration, while if, as a matter of fact, it did 
occur, as for the moment we may assume it did, it is obvious 
that the actual effects are what we see them now to be. 
There are those who believe, but there are those also who 
disbelieve. It is from the nature of the case impossible 
that a fact like the resurrection should appeal to man's ac- 
ceptance like any ordinary fact of history, a battle or an 
earthquake. It cannot do so. If it did, there were no 
place for the question, " Why should it be thought a thing 
incredible with you that God should raise the dead?"* 
In accepting the resurrection of Christ, we accept also the 
inference that it was God who raised Him from the dead, 
and that He did so for a special purpose — the purpose, 
namely, of testifying to His life. His character. His mission, 
His teaching, and His claims, which are inseparable from 
His teaching. In accepting the resurrection, we accept not 
only a bare fact, but a fact that influences our relation to 
God and our thoughts of God — a fact involving antecedently 
many important principles, and resulting in momentous con- 
sequences. 

But be it remembered that if the resurrection is established 
as a fact at all, it is established as a fact for all time ; no 
progress of mind, no advancement of science, no change of 

• Acts xxvi. 8. 
407 



ST. FAUrs EPISTLES. 



circumstances, no distance of time, no lapse of ages can 
affect its truth. That which has happened once has hap- 
pened for ever. The undisputed Epistles of St. Paul furnish 
what may be regarded virtually as evidence of a contempo- 
rary character to the truth of Christ's resurrection. Had it 
not truly happened, they could not have been written ; for 
the pulse of resurrection life beats strong in every page. 
Had it not truly happened, those exigencies of the early 
Church would never have occurred which were the occasion 
of their being written, for without the death and resurrection 
of the Redeemer the Church of the redeemed is an impos- 
sibility. Had it not truly happened, the Christian Church 
would have had no existence now, and the commentary of 
eighteen centuries on the advice and judgment of Gamaliel, 
when confronted with the first preaching of the resurrection, 
would have been quite other than it is : " And now I say 
unto you. Refrain from these men and let them alone ; for if 
this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought ; 
but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be 
found even to fight against God." 



For further treatment of this subject the reader is referred to the 
BoyU Lectures for 1869 — " The Witness of St^ Paul to Christ." 



408 



CHRIST'S TEACHING AND INFLUENCE 
ON THE WORLD. 

BY THE RIGHT REVEREND 

THE LORD BISHOP OF ELY. 



CHRIST'S TEACHING AND INFLUENCE 
ON THE WORLD. 



My subject is a large one, and my time is short ; therefore, I 
will say but very few words of preface. I propose to assume 
nothing but the patent facts of history, admitted even by the 
most advanced sceptics of the day. Heartily as I myself 
believe in all the canonical scriptures, and in all that they 
teach us, I do not ask you to admit the truth of miracles, or 
the inspiration of the Apostles, or the genuineness of the 
fourth Gospel, or anything which any moderately reasonable 
man can doubt of. All I would assume is this, that we 
have in history a general outline of the life and teaching of 
Jesus Christ, that that outline corresponds with what we read 
in the three Synoptical Gospels. There is really no discor- 
dant account or contradictory tradition either among the 
early Christians or the early heretics, or the contemporary 

411 



CHRJSTS TEACHING 



heathens. It is everywhere one and the same. It may be 
more filled up, more coloured, more draped in one picture 
than another; but the features and the lineaments belong 
unmistakably to one Man. In all the biographies, all the 
letters, all the traditions, and they are many and most 
unusually numerous and diversified though not diverse, 
there is in reality nothing like the discrepancy which we 
observe in the character of Socrates as portrayed by his 
disciple Xenophon, and the character of the same Socrates 
as drawn by his other and more famous disciple Plato. 
The account in the first three Gospels is uncontradicted 
by that in the fourth, by what we read in the Acts, by the 
letters of the early disciples, by the traditions carefully 
gathered up by men like Papias, some seventy years after the 
events, by the general belief of after ages, or by the few 
notices to be found in the writings of enemies and unbelievers. 

I shall ask, then, that you admit the general truth of the 
history of Jesus as handed down to us by St. Matthew, St. 
Mark, and St. Luke, just as you would generally admit the 
evidence of common men, even if some choose to think that 
they were credulous men. 

I. Let us first look at the character of Christ as so depicted. 
I venture to say, in the first place, that it exhibits the most 
perfect picture of sublime simplicity ever drawn. The Gos- 
pels seem very much like notes taken from memory by men 

412 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

who were anxious not to lose some record of One whom 
they had known and loved. It is impossible to imagine 
anything more simple or more simply graphic than their 
style — it is still more impossible to imagine anything more 
removed from the vulgarity of rhetoric or display or effort 
at effect, than the character of Jesus Christ. People have 
spoken as though He had been merely a first-rate political 
reformer, a demagogue belonging to a type of unusual dis- 
interestedness. Surely His retired, unseen youth, His gentle, 
quiet manhood. His calm, dignified, unimpassioned words are 
the very opposite in tone and character to those of the noblest 
demagogue or the purest political leader that was ever heard 
of. " He went about doing good," seems almost to record 
His history. " He was meek and lowly of heart," seems 
almost to sum up His character. The most untiring energy, 
the most patient endurance, the most tender and affectionate 
benevolence strike us in every act and every word of Christ. 
And yet there was nothing feeble, nothing effeminate, nothing 
sentimental about Him. Simple as the gentlest child. He 
was brave as the hardest warrior. Weeping with the tender- 
ness of a woman for the sad and the suffering, He rebuked 
with inflexible sternness the base, the cruel, and the hypo- 
critical. With the most unsullied purity of thought and life, 
He had yet a heart of such large and gentle sympathy that 
the very outcasts of mankind could come to Him for help 

413 



CHRIST'S TEACHING 



and counsel, and He never rejected them. He did not 
shrink from touching the leper, and the leprous sinner went 
away from Him a nev/ man, ^\dth a new heart and a new life. 
But the covetous, the proud, the treacherous, the actor in 
religion, were rebuked by Him in words which have made a 
new language in Christendom ; Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, 
sounding to us no longer as writers of the law, members of 
a religious body in Palestine, and actors in dramatic per- 
formances, but as synonyms for all that is untrue in religion 
and in life. And there is one thing which signally sepa- 
rates Him as a teacher from all other teachers of religion and 
morality, viz., that the great lesson was Himself I must 
speak further of this presently. What I mean here is, that 
the biographies, though they give many of His discourses, 
set before us most of all, not what He said, but what He 
did ; and His actions are to us, and have been in all time, 
the m.ost impressive lessons ever given to man. Probably 
all men — even those who do not believe in Him — 
would confess, that if they could see anyone living just 
the life which is related to have been the life of Jesus, 
the man so living would be perfect in all parts, the very 
ideal of humble-hearted, active-spirited, pure-minded, high- 
souled humanity. He taught Himself, by simply living 
Himself; and His life is the great lesson to every age of 

man. 

414 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

And the originality of His character is almost as ob- 
servable as its excellence. He was not simply the Great 
Teacher, like the philosophers of old, to whom crowds of 
disciples were gathered to listen. He was not the contem- 
plative thinker, living retired from human society. He was 
no ascetic, frowning coldly on the innocent happiness of 
man. On the other hand, with all His marvellous activity, 
there is not the smallest appearance of restlessness, excite- 
ment, impetuosity. He was, if He be rightly described 
by His biographers, what no other man ever was — perfectly 
unselfish, living, acting, thinking, speaking, always with 
reference either to the service of God or the good of 
man. 

Of course, as I do not assume the truth of miracles, I am 
unable to ask you to give unlimited credence to all that His 
followers have recorded concerning Him. But this is evi- 
dently the impression that He left upon their minds, viz., 
that He possessed amazing power, but that it was united 
with infinite condescension, and that it was constantly en- 
gaged in doing good, and never exerting itself to do mis- 
chief. They believed that He had power to do all things, 
but that he restrained it from doing evil even to His greatest 
enemies ; that He never used it to gratify Himself, nor to 
save Himself from trouble, or even from suffering ; that it 
was always exercised for the benefit of others ; that in fact 

415 



CHRIST S TEACHING 



the Self which was unspeakably grand was incessantly re- 
strained and denied. 

II. Now let us turn for a few moments to His teaching. 
It was as remarkable as Himself. Other moral philosophers, 
or teachers of the art of living, argued with their followers, 
setting forth moral systems or propounding theological 
theories. He used no arguments, propounded no theories, 
weaved no elaborate systems. All He said was with an 
authority which astonished His hearers, and all the more, 
because of the humility of His life and the self-denial of 
His character. His whole system of casuistry would be 
contained in four or five pages of common printing ; and 
though much of it was new, and all of it of the severest 
stringency, it yet commended itself at once to the con- 
sciences of them that heard Him ; it has commended itself 
in the main to the consciences of all subsequent ages, and 
in principle at least it yet rules the morality of all Christen- 
dom, and in great measure even the morality of the fol- 
lowers of Mohammed.* 

It is easy to sketch out a few of the great principles 
which He thus set forth. At the root of all lay truth. The 
Easterns, among whom He taught, have always been ac- 
counted as too ready to practise deceit. There was nothing 

* It must always be remembered that Mohammed learned the best of 
his morals and his theology from Jews or Christians. 

416 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

Jesus Christ condemned so much as dishonesty or hypo- 
crisy — the very word hypocrisy, as I have said already, and 
all our instinctive hatred and contempt of it, being due to 
His denunciations of it to His disciples. Closely connected 
with this was the stress which He laid on purity of thought. 
To impose a weight and put a strain on outward conduct 
was all too little : it would very likely lead to superficial 
character, to the dreaded and denounced hypocrisy. From 
the heart come evil thoughts, and evil words, and evil 
actions. And the axe must be laid to the root of the tree. 
Make the tree good, and its fruit v/ill be good. To give 
way to the desire of evil is to do evil. 

Again : there was plenty of partial goodness. The hea- 
thens and even the Jews had learned an ardent patriotism, 
but it was linked, as to its alter ego., with a burning hatred of 
their country's enemies, never stronger in Palestine than when 
Jesus taught there. And this principle of love to country 
and hostility to aliens came home, too, into private life. It 
was an axiom that men should " love their neighbours and 
hate their enemies." Never before were those words clearly 
uttered upon earth, " I say unto you, love your enemies." 
Imperfectly, mnserably ill indeed, as they have been acted 
on, they have revolutionized human thought. It was not 
only " Spare your enemies," not only " Forgive your ene- 
mies," but " Love your enemies." Like everything that He 

417 27 



CHRIST'S TEACHING 



taught, it was to have its seat deep down in the heart. It 
v/as essential to every Christian that he should from his 
heart forgive everyone his brother their trespasses. It has 
been objected to His teaching that it undermined the prin- 
ciple of heroic virtue, absorbing active patriotism in a dreamy 
philanthropy. But the objection is false. His teaching was 
at the farthest possible distance from dreaminess or sickli- 
ness. The benevolence He taught was, like His own, active 
and energetic, busying itself, as everything practical must, 
first on those most easily and most naturally within its reach, 
but then extending to every created being, made by the 
same God, and loved by the common Father. There did, 
indeed, arise a new kind of patriotism, to which I may, per- 
haps, allude hereafter; but can anyone read our Lord's 
lamentations over Jerusalem, or St. Paul's utterances of his 
heart's desire for Israel, his almost wish that he himself might 
be lost if he could save them, and yet maintain that patriotism 
in its truest essence was quenched either in the heart of Jesus 
or in the feelings of His most devoted followers ? 

But whatever else may have been peculiar and exceptional 
in the teaching of Christ, that which chiefly distinguishes 
Him from all other teachers is this. Moral philosophers like 
Socrates, ever kept themselves in the background. It was 
philosophy that was everything, Socrates was but the humble 
tyro, feebly feeling after truth. Prophets of every religion, — 

4t3 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

Moses, Zoroaster, Mohammed, all spoke the word which God 
put into their mouths. He was all j and they were at the 
best His honoured subjects and servants. But Jesus Christ, 
the meek, the gentle, the humble, the unselfish, the self- 
denied, the self-devoted, not only showed Himself as the 
Pattern of life, but even propounded Himself as the Object 
of faith, hope, love, obedience, loyalty, devotion, adoration, 
worship. It is impossible to deny this without rending to 
pieces every Christian record. It is argued, I know, that 
this was no part of Christ's original teaching, that it grew up 
after His death among His devoted followers, who looked 
back upon Him as a loved and lost friend and teacher, and 
who by degrees invested Him v/ith Divine attributes and 
paid Him Divine honours j and especially it is thought that 
the writings of St. John, or rather writings in the second cen- 
tury falsely ascribed to St. John, and the later epistles attri- 
buted to St. Paul, fostered this exaggerated belief. I may 
well leave the genuineness of these later writings to those who 
have so ably and so amply dealt with them before me. All 
I wish to say now is, that if St. John's Gospel and St. Paul's 
Epistles had never come down to us, we should still be just 
where we are. This special teaching of Christ by Himself 
is fully developed in every portion of the three synoptical 
Gospels. They are interpenetrated by it from end to end. 

If it never came from Christ, the writers of those Gospels 

419 



CHRIST'S TEACHING 



have misconceived Him altogether, and their record is mere 
fiction and falsehood. And so it is of every document which 
we possess — history, letters, traditions, anecdotes, apoca- 
lypses — they all turn the same way, they all speak the same 
tongue. Nay ; I have often thought that if we had only the 
three synoptical Gospels left, though we should suffer terribly 
indeed by losing the deep theology of St. John the Divine, we 
should still have the clearest possible statements — though 
of the character sometimes called undesigned, or more pro- 
perly indirect and incidental — as to the Godhead, King- 
ship^ Priesthood of Christ ; and that we should have none, 
or at most but one or two of those passages which have been 
thought by many to be inconsistent with the highest belief 
in our Lord's supreme, co-equal, co-eternal Deity. It is in 
fact in St. John and in St. Paul that we find the most de- 
veloped form of the New Testament theology, but on that 
very account the appearance, for appearance it is only, of 
inconsistency and difficulty.* 

Let us briefly recall our Lord's words in the first 

* In answer to this theory of development or afterthought it may be 
said that all the early records, the writings of the Apostles and Evan- 
gelists, the writings of the Apostolic fathers, are clear about the God- 
head of Christ. It was comparatively late that doubters arose, heretics 
like Cerinthus and Theodotus, and philosophic Christians like Justin 
Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, accepting the gospel indeed, 
but diluting it by their reasonings upon it. 

420 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

three Gospels. Constantly He calls Himself the Son of 
Man, meaning — (can we doubt?) — one who had no ordi- 
nary interest in mankind, in manhood, in all humanity : 
constantly He confesses Himself, and is confessed to be, 
the Son of God ; constantly He claims to be King : He 
demands absolute obedience, boundless love ("he that 
loveth father or mother more than Him is not worthy of 
Him") ; He forgives sins; He has authority over the Sabbath; 
He baptizes with the Holy Ghost; He promulgates His 
own law even where it seems to contradict Moses' law ; He is 
at least represented (as I do not assume miracles I must say no 
more) as with creative power, multiplying bread, restoring 
sight, calling the dead to life, saying to the tempest, " Peace, 
be still ;" He proclaims Himself the Judge of all the earth, 
about to sit upon His throne, with all nations, the dead, small 
and great, gathered before Him, and the angels of God wait- 
ing to do His pleasure ; He pronounces the sentence, and 
it runs in words which indicate that the great act of obe- 
dience was waiting on Himself in prison, in sickness, in 
need, and in suffering, that the great sin was neglecting Him, 
Him as represented by His servants. There is one other 
scene which seems to me even more telling than all these. 
Each of the three Evangelists relate, St. John alone omits to 
relate, the institution of the Last Supper. There distinctly — 

whatever may be held by differing sects as to its meaning 

421 



CHRIST S TEACHING 



and its blessing — there distinctly Jesus Christ presents Him- 
self to our faith as the Power which sustains all spiritual life; 
pointing to Himself as the great Sacrifice, the anti-typical 
Paschal Lamb, and then professing that His Body and Blood 
can feed and sustain the souls of all disciples in all coming 
time. What is this but, first to proclaim Himself the Lamb 
of God which taketh away the sin of the world ; and then 
to attribute that sustaining, strengthening, life-giving power 
to Himself which can be predicated of nothing short of 
God? 

I therefore fearlessly assert that, if our Christian records 
be in any way better than waste paper, if they be any records 
of Christ at all, we cannot but learn from them that He pre- 
sented Himself to His followers, not as Prophet merely, 
not as Teacher only, but as their Priest, their King, their 
God. 

Now, observe, first, the perfect originality of this. No 
one ever professed anything like it before. All the heathen 
fables about gods coming down among men, all their belief 
or half belief that some men were the offspring of deity, 
meant nothing like this. Their gods were themselves but 
deified men or personified powers of nature. It was easy to 
make mythic stories about their bodily appearance, or about 
their earthly loves and their earthly progeny. 

Or, to speak of something grander, though perhaps less 

422 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

poetical, the great pantheistic religions gave ready room 
for the fancy that there was a spark of deity in every 
sentient being, and that it might be more and more de- 
veloped into God. In them, indeed, God is but the general 
principle of life and intelligence which runs throughout all the 
universe ; it is duller in one spot and brighter in another ; 
here it may almost go out in darkness, and there it may 
burst forth into the light of heaven and of glory. But it is 
not a person ; at the highest it is an impersonal power. It 
may dwell therefore in the Bull Apis, it may reside in the 
Lama of Thibet, it may grow to be the highest intelligence 
in Buddha. In none of them is it really God. It is but 
the embodiment and the kindling up of a spark of Divine 
Being, but not a living, thinking, willing maker of the 
universe and ruler of all things. But Jesus Christ, when He 
was upon earth, lived among the only people on the earth 
who had a clear conception of one great and personal God, 
so one and so personal as each separate man is one and 
personal, man having been made in the express likeness of 
God. Jesus Christ lived among a people who esteemed that 
one personal God so great and so awful that they dared 
not even speak His name, the name by which He had 
specially revealed Himself, for they thought that that name, 
if human lips should utter it, would shake heaven and 
earth. Yet it was this great, only, incommunicable, un- 

423 



CHRIST S TEACHING 



utterable Being, whose Son He called Himself, whose very 

essence He claimed for His own. 

Let it not be said, that He came at a moment when 

Jewish hopes were all centred on some heavenly Messenger 

to redeem and restore them, that He only fell into their 

notions, took advantage of their expectations and flattered 

their prejudices. They expected a Messiah, no doubt, 

with much in him that was heavenly (if you will. Divine) ; 

they expected Him to redeem their nation, to overthrow 

their enemies, to advance their kingdom. But they never 

thought that their Messiah would claim to be the Supreme 

Jehovah, they never thought that He was to redeem, not 

their bodies, but their souls, by dying as a lamb sacrificed 

upon the altar ; they never thought that, instead of satisfying 

their patriotism and elevating their nation. He would teach 

them to subordinate patriotism to universal love of man, 

and that instead of extending the earthly kingdom of Israel 

through the world, He would found a kingdom which should 

be wholly moral and spiritual, and which would place the 

Greek, the Roman and the Samaritan on the same footing 

with the long-favoured children of Abraham. So far were 

they from any thoughts like these, that it was because of all 

this that they crucified their Christ. 

And if all this were original in Jesus, it was as bold as it 

was original. The humble, unostentatious, unselfish, Jewish 

424 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

peasant declares Himself the One Eternal God. If it was 
assumption only, it deserved the death which was its con- 
sequence. 

But just let us consider it for a moment. Was it fanati- 
cism ? I have already pointed to the calmness, self-posses- 
sion, soberness of Christ. No character in history exhibits 
these qualities so markedly. There is not a symptom of 
restlessness, excitement, intemperance, of any kind in one 
of His discourses. His eloquence — and no one can doubt 
His eloquence who has read, " Consider the lilies of the 
field," who has heard "Come unto Me, all ye that travail and 
are heavy laden " — but His eloquence, though more heart- 
thrilling than any human eloquence, was never rhetorical, 
never emotional. It carried conviction because it sounded 
like truth uttered by love. In fact, fanaticism or insanity are 
charges that cannot be made against Him on any ground 
whatever, except on the ground that He believed what He 
taught, and that no reasonable man could believe it. And if 
so, I think the charge must be abandoned, for Bacon, 
Locke, Leibnitz, Newton have believed it, and it is still 
believed by the most reasoning minds in Christendom. 

Imposture is another charge. I have reminded you that 
the great principle of Christ's teaching was truth. If there 
was one point on which it could with some colour of proba- 
bility be said that He was an enthusiast, it would be in His 

4?S 



CHRIST S TEACHING 



love of truth, and His scorn for all that was false and 
hypocritical. It would be strange indeed that such a 
teacher should lay the foundation of His teaching in false- 
hood. And be it remembered, that the supposed falsehood 
was not to please popular tastes, or to take advantage ol 
popular prejudices, but to run counter to and offend them 
all, having apparently no purpose, but the purely disin- 
terested purpose of mending men's manners against their 
wills, and having evidently no earthly end but persecution, 
suffering, and death. The fanaticism is the most inexplica- 
ble, the imposture the most improbable ever heard or 
thought of. 

III. And now let us see what the teaching of this so- 
called fanatic or impostor has done. 

I suppose it will be acknowledged that He lived at a time 
when the world was singularly in want. Heathenism had 
failed to satisfy it. The world had outgrown its infancy, and 
had tossed away its dolls. The philosophers derided, even 
the poets could hardly play with, their old heathen deities. 
Society was corrupt to its core. The old monarchies had 
sunk one by one,— Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Mace- 
donia — oppressed with their own vices. Rome had indeed 
reached the height of power, but it was power to be vile 
and so to be miserable. And there was a groan uttered 
from universal humanity for something to save it from the 

426 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

utter exhaustion of sensuality hard by suffering, of moral, 
social, and political degradation. Judea itself, where still 
God was worshipped, was no exception to the general rule, 
though it had yet hardly fallen to the depth of imperial 
Rome. And what of philosophy "^ Certainly it could 
never have had a better trial. The greatest moral philoso- 
phers the world ever knew, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, had 
taught at Athens. The sound of their voices reached 
Rome, and echoed through all the civilized world. Without 
doubt, their teaching was valued, without doubt it was 
valuable to the thinking few ; but the effect produced upon 
the many is too truly described by Ovid, '' Video meliora 
proboque, Deteriora sequor." The salt of society had not 
been discovered j for society stank, and was corrupt 
throughout. 

And then Jesus Christ set forth a remedy, and it was 
Himself. It cannot be too emphatically said, or too 
steadily borne in memory, that Christianity is Christ. 
So He taught ; so His disciples after Him — not a law — not 
a theory — not a code of morals — not a system of casuistry — 
not even an elaborate theology — but " they ceased not to 
teach and to preach Jesus Christ." 

And this did satisfy human wants, 

(i) Moral philosophy never moved more than a few 

427 



CHRIST'S TEACHING 



thoughtful minds. A strong law, like the law of Moses or 
the laws of Rome, may put a curb on men's passions and 
keep them in by bit and bridle, lest they fall upon you. 
But there was something vastly more powerful in the 
teaching of Christ. He propounded Himself to His fol- 
lowers, as the one great object of their loyalty and love. 
Now love and loyalty are the very groundsprings of noble 
and disinterested life. The servant of law lives in obe- 
dience to law, because to break law is to incur its penalties. 
The moralist trains himself with special reference to him.self 
The very necessity of his training turns the moral eye in- 
ward, creates self-consciousness, and produces, perhaps de- 
spondency from failure, perhaps self-confidence from suc- 
cess. The effect of loyalty is altogether othenvise. The 
eye, the heart, the hope, are all turned outwards — and in 
the case of the Christian — not outwards only but upwards. 
The result is, not the calculating morality, which may easily 
make a man selfish, but the absorbing love of a master, 
which makes him self-devoted. And coincident with the 
love and loyalty to the Master, came the brotherhood of all 
who loved and obeyed that Master ; a close tie of brother- 
hood towards them, and earnest desire to bring others into 
that brotherhood, and so an universal charity to mankind. 
Thus did the Great Teacher provide for the wants of man, 
considered as a moral being. 

428 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

(2) Let us see how He provided for His wants as a 
spiritual being. It is the witness of all religious antiquity, 
that, whilst the soul longed to look up to, and rest in some- 
thing above it, it was ever striving to bring that which was 
above it down to a level with itself It could not grasp in- 
finity, and it was ever trying to make it finite. So it de- 
vised man-gods and idol-gods. So it degraded God to be 
no higher than man, nay, " likened its Maker to the grazed 
ox." What Jesus Christ did was to bring God down to 
man, but not to degrade and lower Him by doing so. He 
professed not to be a Man-God, — like the Saturn and 
Jupiter of Latium, like the Lama of Thibet, or like the 
Buddha of Ceylon and China ; but the God-Man, God 
dwelling in human flesh, and manifesting all the character 
of infinity in the person of the finite. So He satisfied the 
yearnings of the human soul, without lowering the dignity 
of the Divine Spirit. It is impossible to remember the 
fables of heathenism without feeling that Deity is not only 
lowered, but utterly lost in them. But I appeal to your ex- 
perience and to your hearts, whether the conception of God 
conveyed to us through Christ is not raised, rather than 
depressed — raised even above the conception of the High 
and Lofty One which inhabiteth eternity, as discovered by 
our reasonings, or as revealed to our faith, in the theism of 

the philosopher or the writings of the Jewish prophets. 

429 



CHRIST S TEACHING 



(3) Once more, He provided for man's wants as a social 
and political being. Social polity has ever oscillated between 
an absolute despotism and a pure democracy. There are 
many who say that the only ideal of good government is 
either a paternal despotism, or "liberty, equality, and fra- 
ternity." It is most true that our Lord declined persistently 
to mingle Himself with earthly politics, or to meddle in the 
affairs of earthly kingdoms. But He declared that His 
mission was to set up in this world a kingdom not of this 
world. And the principles, the polity of that kingdom com- 
bined in a marvellous manner the unopposed will of the 
Father-King with the fraternal equality of all the people. 
As King of the kingdom of God He exacted the most de- 
voted loyalty and the most unswerving obedience ; but to 
the members of the kingdom He said, "All ye are brethren." 
He forbade any to aspire to pre-eminence, or authority, like 
the kings of the Gentiles ; to those who desired to sit on 
His right hand and on His left He only promised that they 
should drink of His cup of suffering, and be baptized mth 
His baptism of blood. 

(4) Lastly, He provided for man's natural wants as a 
sinful being. Every religion witnesses to the anxiety of the 
religious mind to throw off a weight from the conscience by 
austerities, or by sacrifices, or by gifts. I am aware that I 
am treading on ground which may lead me into controversy, 

430 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

and from this I must guard myself. Still I think every one 
who reads the Gospels must confess that the Christian his- 
tory and the Christian faith culminate in sacrifice. I do not 
wish to reason on it ; I readily admit its deep mystery, and 
the great difficulty of explaining it ; I only assert, and I 
assert without fear of contradiction, that Christ set forth 
Himself, and that His disciples set Him forth to the world 
as One who suffered for the sins of that race which He had 
made His own ; that He first bound them closely to Him- 
self, and then drained off to the dregs that cup which their 
sins had prepared for them. He came into mankind that 
He might carry off the curse which sin had cast into the 
midst of it. And I know, indeed, that there are some, and 
some for whose scruples and difficulties I feel deep respect, 
who, acknowledging all the debts due to Christianity, for 
raising, ennobling, and purifying human life and human 
thought, yet say that they could accept every portion of it 
save only its doctrine of atonement and sacrifice. They 
think it derogatory to the mercy and to the love of God, 
and they doubt if the sins of feeble beings like ourselves 
can ever be so offensive to His majesty as to need such an 
intervention, or to cost so tremendous a price. I say I 
respect their scruples, for in some cases I beheve they have 
been the scruples of men very pure in life and very loving 

in heart. But of this I am most certain, that there is 

431 



CHRIST'S TEACHING 



nothing in Christianity which has so commended it to the 
acceptance of mankind at large. And certainly its effect, if 
fully exhibited, is very remarkable. Its effect is first to 
enhance our sense of sin, and secondly to enhance our 
sense of the love of God. Wellnigh every other system of 
forgiveness tends to make light of sin. If repentance be 
easy, sin cannot be so very hard. Wellnigh every other 
system of religion has created a dread of the Sovereign 
Ruler of the Universe, and has seldom, if ever, led to de- 
voted love of Him. Strangely enough, too, all past religions 
had treated sin, when great, as inexpiable^ and gave no room 
for repentance, even though sought carefully and with tears. 
But the Christian faith in the atoning love of Christ has 
deepened, beyond all comparison with aught besides, our 
conviction of the darkness and the danger of sin ; has yet 
assured us that repentance for sin is not impossible, but to 
be attained and then certain to be accepted ; and, lastly, 
has been the one only convincing evidence that, for all the 
clouds and darkness in which nature and natural religion 
have enveloped the Deity, there is yet a loving Heart in 
heaven, and that we may, with undoubting, filial confidence 
cast our orphan souls upon the Fatherhood of God. And 
so it is a fact, which nothing can take away, that, with all its 
admitted mystery and deep obscurity, the cross of Christ 
has been, even more than all else in His marvellous history, 

432 . 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

that which has won human hearts, and which has satisfied 
human yearnings. 

IV. Let us pass to the reception of Christ's teaching 
in the world. There is not much that is new to be said 
about this. First, as to the mode of its propagation : it 
was not propagated by force, Hke the religion of Mohammed ; 
nor was it a poHtical revolution, as Buddhism was a great 
rising against the caste system of the Brahmins, joined with 
a modification or so-called reformation of their theological 
and philosophical theories. Christ forbade His followers to 
mix themselves up in the politics either of the Jews or of 
the heathens; and, as to force. He told them, in words 
which all Christian history since has verified, that "they 
who take the sword shall perish with the sword." In fact, 
the mode of the propagation of the faith of Christ was the 
simplest conceivable : it was merely a proclaiming of Christ 
as the Prince and the Saviour of the world. Apostles 
preached the kingdom of God, invited men to come into it, 
declared that Christ was its King, claimed from His subjects 
obedience to His sovereignty, and promised them peace in 
their hearts here and happiness in His home hereafter. It 
is a matter of perfect indifference to my present argument 
whether you acknowledge that this preaching was accom- 
panied with miracles or not. If it was, then cadit qucBstio, 
Probably no one in this company will say, as the Jews said 

433 28 



CHRIST'S TEACHING 



and as some of the heathens said, that those miracles were 
due to Satanic agency. If there were miracles therefore, 
they were of God. But, if you refuse your assent to mira- 
cles, then I only say the result was all the more miraculous. 
If there was nothing but a simple teaching of Christ — if 
only men narrated the life of the Jewish carpenter, told of 
His death, declared him to be their King, set up His cross 
as their hope, and claimed submission to Him as their God ; 
and if thereupon, in the midst of Jerusalem and Rome, and 
Athens and Corinth, and Ephesus and Philippi, and Smyrna, 
and Antioch, and Alexandria, at a time when art and science, 
and civilization and philosophy were at the greatest height 
ever known; if then and there, in the space of a single 
generation, thousands and hundreds of thousands, of all 
ages and all classes, bowed their heads and gave up their 
hearts to Christ, I ask what was it tha't gave such magic 
power to the so-called " foolishness of preaching ?" I 
answer. It was the force of truth ; and I ask again, Has 
any other answer ever been given ? 

The progress of Christianity in every stronghold of 
heathenism soon roused the jealousy of the governors of 
the world. We need not dwell upon the cruelties with 
which its votaries were persecuted. Men clothed in gar- 
ments smeared with pitch, and then lighted up as living 
torches, to add a horrid lustre to the festivities of the 

434 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

Emperor. Men crucified with their heads downwards. 
Men thrown to wild beasts. The heart sickens at the 
recital of their sufferings, and still more at the ferocity of 
their torturers. But nothing stopped them. Every human 
power was exerted. Every device was tried. But neither 
skill nor force availed. The stream flowed onwards till it 
became a river ; the river spread out till it became a flood. 
In the short space of three centuries from the death of 
Jesus, Europe, Asia, and Africa, as far as civilization had 
reached, owned Him as their sovereign, and marched under 
His banner. Not a blow had been struck in His favour, 
though thousands and hundreds of thousands had died 
rather than disown Him. And then the heathen oracles 
were silent, the heathen altars were deserted, the heathen 
philosophers were changed to Christians ; Christian presbyters 
ministered where heathen priests had sacrificed; Christian 
orators spoke where heathen advocates had pleaded ; 
Christian judges decreed justice in the seats of the praetors 
and the proconsuls ; a Christian Emperor sat upon the 
throne of the Caesars. It is so still ; the great bulk of the 
civilized world still retains, and professes to be guided by, 
laws, customs, and morals, which are really drawn from the. 
teaching of Jesus Christ. 

(i) It is said that the spread of Christianity is at least 

435 



CHRIST'S TEA CHIANG 



partly due to mere human and common-place causes. "^ It 
is said for instance, that the civilization of the heathen 
empire was effete, that society was corrupt, that the very 
world was wearied with its own wickedness. Very true : 
yet it was in the Augustan age that Christ lived and taught, 
the very climax of ancient art and letters, and refinement, 
and philosophy. Very true ; but still, that which will be 
our only refuge if we are driven out of our faith, had offered 
everything that it can ever have to offer. Moral philosophy 
had done its best. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, 
Seneca, had done all that could be done by reasoning and 
moral teaching, to win men from vice, and to train them to 
virtue. And earth, for all that, was wearing the very 
semblance of hell. Men, no doubt, were weary of it, and 
they listened the more readily to Him who promised to 
the weary rest. Is it no miark of design and wisdom, that 
the remedy was offered at that very time when it was the 
most needed, and when the need was the most keenly felt ? 
(2) It is said, that the world then, in its deep dissatisfied 
restlessness and inquietude, was turning right and left for 
satisfaction, and that thus it readily lent an ear to the super- 
stitious and the supernatural. It may have been so. It 
had apparently given up all faith ; and the unbeliever passes 

* The arguments here considered are those propounded in Lecky's 
" Histoiy of European Morals." 

436 



AND INFl^UENCE ON THE WORLD. 

readily into the credulous. But I cannot think it reasonable 
to conclude, that an age of philosophical scepticism, of un- 
bridled licentiousness, even though it might combine with 
these some disposition in favour of the marvellous, would 
be likely to admit the pretensions of Christianity without 
careful investigation ; when Christianity bore with it require- 
ments of the most rigid morality, offered in exchange for its 
philosophy simple faith, in exchange for its licentiousness 
the sternest self-denial, and gave it no promise in this life, 
but of contempt and suffering, and very likely martyrdom. 

(3) It is said once more, that the unequalled organization 
of the Primitive Church made it a firm phalanx sure to win 
its way through the ranks of the fiercest foes. Very true. 
The economy of the Primitive Church, with its bishops, 
priests, deacons, and deaconesses in every city and suburb, 
with its strict and unbroken unity throughout the world 
which it had won and was winning, was, no doubt, an 
organization, a freemasonry, a secret society if you will, 
which constituted the best possible machinery for preserving 
and propagating its faith. Is it no sign of the superhuman 
wisdom of its Founder, that He not only taught the great 
secret of life ; but that He devised means whereby that 
secret should be guarded and handed on to men ? 

I must here consider for a moment one of the gravest 
questions which arises in many minds about the progress of 
Christianity. Granted that its speed was rapid at the first, 

437 



CHRIST S TEACHING 



why has it ever stagnated since ? If it be the great remedy 

for human woes, and the great prompter of hmnan virtue 

and moraUty, why did not its Divine Author, if Divine He 

be, ordain that it should at once find its way everywhere, 

and should never fail anywhere ? I am ready to admit the 

gravity of the question. I doubt if there be any greater 

mystery connected with the faith of Christ. It was objected 

to that faith by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, perhaps the most 

eminent of the deists of the last century, and it has tried 

many a believing, as well as many a doubting spirit, since. 

We naturally feel, that a religion meant to save all men 

ought to be made knoA\Ti to all men. In the few words I can 

say on it now, I do not pretend to clear up all the mystery. 

I cannot clear up all the mystery of God's actions or of 

God's will. I would only remind you first, that this is at 

all events but one specimen of the working of that general 

law, which seems to rule in creation, in Providence, and in 

grace. The analogy between the development of nature 

and the development of revelation was ably traced in the 

lecture of one who preceded me some fortnight or three 

weeks back. It certainly seems the principle of the Divine 

action, that all things should rise up into maturity by steady 

gradual progress and growth. So the infancy of mankind 

was left in the glimmer of twilight ; then there was a 

da\vning light in the ages of the patriarchs and the prophets, 

438 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

till the day broke full upon the world in the coming into it 
of Jesus Christ. By the same kind of gradual working, that 
day-spring from on high has extended its brightness first to 
one land and then to another. It is no more marvellous 
that China and India and Central Africa should not yet 
have seen it all, than that for thousands of years of man's 
past history, the whole human race, except at most a very 
small portion of it, should have known nothing of Christ or 
even of God. There has been an infancy of man, as there 
has been an infancy of the Universe; and we may well 
believe, that there may have been a preparation for Christ's 
coming, and elsewhere a preparation for the knowledge of 
His coming, corresponding with the preparation through 
countless ages past for the habitation of man upon the 
earth. 

And as to the imperfect reception of Christianity in some 
places and times, and its actual retrogression, as from the 
Mohammedan conquest, in others ; is it not plain that we 
have to expect Christianity to advance by moral means and 
not by mechanical ? Christ left a leaven in the world, that 
it might work and leaven mankind. We are apt to expect 
that it' should work by magic, and not by its own moral 
influence. Now, our Lord never so worked on earth. If 
He worked in His miracles by a mechanical force on nature, 
He never applied such a force to human wills, nor does His 

439 



CHRIST S TEACHING 



Gospel work so now in the world. He called His church 
the salt of the earth ; but He warned it that the salt 
might lose its savour. He said it was a grain of mustard 
seed, which should grow into a tree and fill the earth ; but 
He never said that there should be no blights, no frosts, no 
tempests which might check its growth, or nip its leaves or 
rend off its branches. The apostles themselves knew that 
they had the Gospel treasure in earthen vessels, and when 
the vessel was injured the treasure could not be safely con- 
veyed by it. It is very natural to expect that a potent 
remedy should produce an instantaneous cure. But we are 
constantly taught by experience that maladies are too deep- 
seated, or constitutions too sickly, for rapid or perfect 
restoration. We naturally expect every man under the true 
influence of Christianity to become perfect : we expect 
Christianized society to exhibit no defects. But, in reality, 
we only find that both the man and the people have a new 
principle, which gradually raises them, that they become 
instinct with a new life, which shows itself sometimes indeed 
by vigorous action, but which sometimes, too, becomes lan- 
guid and feeble. If we make these allowances, there wall 
be nothing to stagger our faith in the slow progress of the 
Gospel through the world. In the beginning, Christianity 
was thrown into mortal conflict with heathenism. That 

heathenism it steadily extirpated, whilst the sounder philo- 

440 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

sophy which had lived in the midst of heathenism it 
adopted for its own. In the midst of this there came too 
often an attempt at compromise. There sprang up a fusion 
between Christian verity and philosophy, and philosophy, 
too, of the corrupter heathen type, not of the purest or most 
divine type. Hence the strange forms of heresy which 
meet us in the earlier centuries. After the barbarian con- 
quests, Christendom indeed took its fierce captors captive. 
They who had trod down imperial Rome, bowed lowly 
before Him whom Roman governors had crucified and 
Roman emperors had persecuted. Then came a struggle 
between barbarism and faith, the faith gradually subduing 
the barbarism, but the barbarism still clouding the faith. 
And I think we do not enough remember how through the 
Middle Ages, on which we often look so contemptuously 
back, there was ever going on a great mission work of the 
church and of the Gospel, the fierce barons and the rude 
churls being as hard to win to the obedience of faith as the 
heathens with whom the apostles pleaded in the early a<yes 
of the faith. 

On the whole there has been a constant progress, greatest 
certainly at first, but never seriously slackened, till Mo- 
hammed devised a great Christian heresy (for a Christian 
heresy it was, as much as that of the Gnostics, or that of 
the Manichees before him,) thereby blighting the growth of 

441 



CHJ^ISrS TEACHING 



the Eastern Church for centuries ; still, however, there was 
progress again in the west, among Germans, and Slaves 
and Scandinavians ; stagnation for a time from the twelfth to 
the eighteenth century, as far at least as visible increase was 
concerned; and now, again, progress, through the over- 
spreading of new continents by Christian colonists, and the 
bringing in of newly-known heathen tribes to the faith of 
the Church. Unless we insist that the world should be won 
by miracle, I do not see that we can ask more evidence to 
the winning power of the teaching of Christ. 

V. And now for its effect on those taught by it, and on 
the world at large through them. I have argued that phi- 
losophy failed ; has Christianity succeeded ? With the 
allowances which must be made for the matter on which it 
has to work, and with the premised condition that it was 
not intended so to act as a spell that man's will would sim- 
ply be enslaved by it, his moral responsibility lost, and his 
state of probation done away with ; then I assert that it has 
succeeded incomparably beyond anything else that has ever 
been devised, or ever attempted by man. 

Let us take great and acknowledged facts. It is confessed 
that under the influence of Christianity gladiatorial shows, 
and the throwing of prisoners to wild beasts, were given up 
and done away with. It is impossible to deny that the 
worst forms of licentiousness, which were not only tolerated 

442 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

in Greece and Rome, but indulged in openly by their 
heroes, attributed to their deities, and celebrated in verse by 
their poets, have been universally reprobated in Christendom, 
and dare not now show their heads abroad even in the most 
corrupted centres of modern society. The respect paid to 
woman is due before any other cause to the honour with 
which the Great Founder of our faith treated those women 
who waited on Him, and to His filial reverence for the 
mother that bare Him. The laws of marriage which now 
rule in Europe are not heathen, not even Jewish, but pre- 
eminently Christian. What Christ spoke concerning mar- 
riage and divorce regulated the principles of the Church, 
and the first Christian rulers incorporated those principles 
into the laws of the empire. Our domestic morals have 
thus been governed by a few sentences from the lips of 
one Man. The existence of hospitals for the sick and 
wounded is entirely due to the charity of the early Chris- 
tian Church. The softening of the horrors of war, and 
the better treatment of prisoners, are equally the result of 
Christian influence. Contrast, for instance, the conduct 
of the most humane of heathen conquerors with the con- 
duct of any great Christian general. No one among 
the ancients is more celebrated for his humanity than 
Titus ; yet when Titus had taken Jerusalem, he crucified 
by thousands its undoubtedly brave defenders, and the 

443 



CHRIST'S TEACHING 



historian tells us that " there lacked crosses for the bodies 
and room for erecting the crosses." When Gustavus 
Adolphus took a city, he so guarded the lives of its in- 
habitants, that it is said that no injury passed upon the 
head of one of them. In the war we have just witnessed, 
the German army marched into Paris, after fierce fights and 
long sieges, yet the first care of the invaders was not to slay 
or torture, but to feed the famished inhabitants of the city 
they had taken, the conquering army even giving up its 
rations to supply food to their enemies, who might else have 
perished for hunger. And as for the prisoners in modern 
warfare, the wounded and the sick are tended by the sur- 
geons, and nursed in the hospitals of those against whom 
they have been fighting, and against whom it is possible 
they may yet live to fight* This regard for human life is 
justly regarded by philanthropists as the truest test of a high 

* The terrible scenes just enacted, and even now enacting, in Paris, 
almost seem to contradict my words concerning mercy in war, words 
written and even printed before Paris was burned and wasted. But let us 
remember that eighty years ago France threw away its Christianity, and 
took Atheism for its creed ; that in the last fifty years it has been slowly 
and painfully recovering its faith ; that Paris has been the centre of the 
unbelief of Europe ; that so, a large portion of its inhabitants have 
grown up utterly without religion ; that, according to a friendly witness, 
*' the people of Paris believe not in any God, nor in any man ; "* or, 
according to another statement, "the Communists acknowledge no God, 
no man, no faith, no hope, nothing but better wages and more pleasure ; "t 
that the chief perpetrators of the horrors of the past week not only 



♦ Fortnightly Review, quoted in Times, May 31, 1 871. 
t Times, May 31, 1871. 

444 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

civilization ; and I confidently ask whether it has ever come 
but from the influence of Christian teaching and the eflect 
of Christian sympathy. 

Let us turn to the question of slavery. It is objected by 
some that there is no direct denunciation of slavery in the 
Scriptures. I am not now concerned with the Old Testa- 
ment; but I may yet, in passing, say, that whilst Moses 
could hardly refuse to recognise slavery as a prevailing 
institution, he still gave laws concerning it which mitigated 
its horrors to the utmost, and placed the Jewish slave in a 
condition, moral, social, and spiritual, utterly unlike to his 
condition in any heathen state. As regards the Gospel, w^e 
must remember, once more, that Christ was not a political 
reformer, not professedly a social reformer, not even prima- 
rily a moral reformer. His mission was to elevate men's 
whole spiritual nature; and this He did by the infusion 
into society of a new religious or spiritual principle. It did 
not fall in with the purposes of that mission to descend to 
every detail of social life, still less to regulate political 
institutions. So, He never denounces war, nor imperial 

abhorred Christianity, but murdered priests, only because they were 
ministers of Christ, and proclaimed Atheism and Materiahsm to be the 
very basis of their theory, both in pohtics and in life. There is nothing 
to surprise us when we find that those who deliberately cast off religion 
and humanity, faith in God, and faith in man, fall lower than those who 
are simply ignorant of the true principles of either. Atheists in the 
midst of faith are very likely to be much worse than heathens. 

445 



CHRIST'S TEACHING 



t}Tanny, nor even the political factions of the Jews. It is 
scarcely a question that sudden emancipation of a great 
slave population is never desirable. And if the first 
Christians had preached against a deeply-rooted social insti- 
tution^ they might easily have produced great political con- 
vulsions, and have ultimately rendered less tolerable than 
ever the conditions of those whom they desired to befriend. 
But the principles of Christ's teaching are directly adverse 
to slavery, and their progress has invariably tended to 
mitigate, and at length to eradicate it. The principle of 
the brotherhood of all men, of their common interest in 
God, of their common humanity with Christ ; the principle 
that there was neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor 
female, neither bond nor free, in the great Christian com- 
monwealth, but that all were one in Christ — this principle 
cannot be worked out ^\dthout destroying the abject servi- 
tude of one man to another. And, as a matter of fact, this 
is what it has done. "The change brought about was 
gradual, but it was sure. At first monks, especially eastern 
monks, refused to be waited on by slaves. Then mission- 
aries never lost an opportunity of redeeming slaves .... 
Ecclesiastical legislation declared the slave to be a ma7i, 
and not a f/iing, or chattel ; laid it do\\Ti as a rule that his 
life was his own, and could not be taken without public 
trial; enforced on a master guilty of involuntary murder 

446 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

of his slave penance and exclusion from the communion ; 
opened asylums to those who fled from their master's 
cruelty ; declared the enfranchisement of the serf a work 
acceptable to God. The abolition of domestic slavery 
was one of the most important duties incumbent on the 
missionary energies of the mediaeval Church." * It is sad, 
indeed, to think how the plague of slavery again broke 
out on the discovery of the West Indies and of 
America — slavery, too, in one of its most revolting and 
debasing forms \ but it still is true that Christianity and 
Christian missions have struggled with it from the first, 
and that now, at length, it seems to be yielding, and 
there is good hope that it may ere long be utterly 
subdued. 

In every way Christianity has been the pioneer of civili- 
zation, and the giver of social comfort and peace. Very 
truly, many colonists from Christian lands have given to 
the colonies which they founded not comfort, nor peace, 
nor civilization ; but it has been because they have left 
Christian lands and not carried their Christianity out along 
with them. Often, indeed, they have only laid waste 
heathen lands and oppressed heathen races ; and Christianity 
following after them, has had to undo the evil, which 

* Maclear's " History of the Christian Missions in the Middle 
Ages," p. 417. Macmillan, 1863. 

447 



C/IJ^IST'S TEACHING 



apostate Christians had inflicted. Still we may challenge 
any one to show a single instance, in which civilization in 
modern times has spread to any place to which Christianity 
has not first found its way. We may challenge any one to 
deny, that, where Christianity has been forsaken or neglected, 
tliere have sprung up, instead of it, as in revolutionary 
France, cruelty, licentiousness, and social degradation. 

Christianity, once more, has been favourable at least to 
the development of mind, the cultivation of letters, the 
advancement of science. It is easy, of course, to say that 
there have often been efforts among Christians to check 
the progress of science, still more frequently panic terrors 
as to its unexpected discoveries. It is easy to point to 
Galileo, easy to speak of the fate of geology in the earlier 
days of the present century, of the reception of Mr. Darwin's 
theory now. As to Galileo, we may at once disown the 
Inquisition as representing the Christian faith. But it is 
unnecessary to deny that an appearance of antagonism 
between faith and science, or faith and literary criticism, 
will alarm timid believers, and so may lead to temporary 
misunderstandings between Christians and men of science 
or of literature. Yet look at past history and say, first, 
whether science and philosophy and literature did not for 
centuries find their only shelter in the Church, even under the 
deepest shadows of its cathedrals and monasteries. When 

448 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

all the world besides was unlettered and ignorant, learning 
flourished among the schoolmen, philosophy and even 
physical science were pursued, as far as they then could be 
pursued, by ecclesiastics and divines. The name of Roger 
Bacon stands out conspicuously as one who, in the cell of 
a convent and under the garb of a friar, carried inquiries 
into physical truth to a height which, considering his date 
and his difficulties, may compare even with the great and 
rapid discoveries of the present day. In short, it may be 
said truly and fearlessly, that whilst the only other re- 
ligious systems in the world, which deserve consideration, 
Mohammedanism, Brahminism, and Buddhism, have either 
stifled, or at the best stunted science and made stagnant 
civilization ; Christianity has fostered learning of all kinds, 
and has been in itself the highest civilization ever known. 

I have naturally dwelt upon the external development of 
the religious life of Christians, not upon its inner being. A 
lecture on evidence, must of necessity appeal to that which 
can be known and read of all men. Yet I might, if there 
were time, point to the characters of individual Christians as 
proof of the elevating, ennobling, purifying, sanctifying 
power of the teaching of Christ, of the contemplation of 
Christ, and of the love of Christ. I will content myself 
with quoting words which many here have read, and read 
with interest, long ago. The author of *' Ecce Homo" 

449 29 



CHRIST S TEACHING 



writes : '' That Christ's method, when rightly appHed, is 
really of mighty force, may be shown by an argument which 
the severest censor of Christians will hardly refuse to admit. 
Compare the ancient with the modern world. ' Look on 
this picture and on that.' One broad distinction in the 
characters of men forces itself into prominence. Among all 
men of the ancient heathen world, there were scarcely one 
or two to whom we may venture to apply the epithet 'holy.' 
In other words, there were not more than one or two, if 
any, who, besides being virtuous in their actions, were pos- 
sessed with an unaffected enthusiasm of goodness^ and be- 
sides abstaining from vice, regarded even a vicious thought 
with horror. Probably no one will deny that in Christian 
countries this higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness, 
has existed. Few will maintain that it is exceedingly rare. 
Perhaps the truth is, that there has been scarcely a town in 
any Christian country since the time of Christ, where a cen- 
tury has passed without exhibiting a character of such eleva- 
tion that his mere presence has shamed the bad and made 
the good better, and has been felt at times like the presence 
of God Himself. And if this be so, has Christ failed ? or 
can Christianity die ? "* 

Let us apply this test to one or two of the greatest and 
best of the heathen philosophers. Take Socrates first. Is 
* " Ecce Homo," p. 71. Second edition, 1866. 
450 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 



it possible to imagine an apostle of Christ joining, as we 
know that Socrates joined, in drinking bouts where many- 
were intoxicated, not himself drinking willingly, but when 
pressed making deeper potations than any one besides, yet 
never exhibiting symptoms of drunkenness ? * It cannot be 
conceived that the unutterable licentiousness of Alcibiades, 
manifested during one of those drinking bouts, could have 
been so manifested, I will not say in the presence of St. 
Paul or St. John, or in the presence of any Christian 
clergyman since them, but even in the lowest assembly of 
English drunkards. 

Take Marcus Aurelius : Mr. Lecky, the eloquent and able 
writer on " European Morals," has held him up as an ex- 
ample of what pure philosophy can do, and has challenged 
comparison between him and the most exalted and sanctified 
of the followers of Christ. We may well acknowledge the 
nobleness, the disinterestedness, the simplicity, and the 
elevation of his character. No absolute and irresponsible 
governor of men has ever been more "clear in his high 
office." Yet the concessions, which his panegyrist has made 

concerning him, separate him off by a broad line of demar- 

... ^ 

cation from the highest types of Christian holiness. When 

his wife died, for his children's sake he would not contract 

a second marriage ; but he preferred the society of a mis- 

* Platon. Symposium. Steph. iii., 220. 

451 



CHRIST'S TEACHING 



tress. When he persecuted the Christians, an act which we 
may perhaps attribute to mistaken conscientiousness, he not 
only persecuted them, but he derided their sufferings. 
Could we in these days even call a man Christian who 
could so err? Professed Christians, no doubt, fall into 
licentiousness, but then they know they are in act repudiat- 
ing their Christianity. Christians, alas ! have persecuted 
those whom they regarded as heretics. But we must 
look fairly at the sad history of persecution before we 
simply say that Roman emperors did no more. In 
the first place, persecution was not inconsistent with 
the principles of heathenism, nor is it inconsistent with 
the principles, if such there be, of atheism or of atheistic 
philosophy; but it is wholly inconsistent with the prin- 
ciples taught by Christ, and can only have been tolerated 
when those principles had been perverted or obscured. 
In the next place, Christian persecutors, believing that their 
own form of Christianity was the only faith that could save 
mankind, esteeming therefore those who defiled that faith 
as more dangerous to mankind than any robbers or mur- 
derers, thought consistently, though erroneously, that they 
were bound to stamp out heresy as they would stamp out 
pestilence in their cattle sheds, or moral pestilence in their 
homes and villages. In the third place, though deeds of 

violence always harden the hearts of those that do them, it 

452 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. 

is well known that even inquisitors, so far from ridiculing 
the sufferings of their victims, often decreed those sufferings 
with trembling hands and broken accents, and eyes filled 
with tears. Persecutors are no types of Christian excel- 
lence \ the truest Christia.nity utterly repudiates them 3 but 
even persecutors have generally been so, not from love of 
persecution, but from a deep and painful conviction that 
persecution was a duty and a necessity. 

It will be replied, and very truly, that for all this, 
Socrates and Marcus Aurelius were grand specimens of 
humanity, rising to a noble height of moral greatness in an 
age of cruelty and licentiousness, and that we cannot expect 
them to have been all that we should expect from a Chris- 
tian apostle or from a Christian king. Granted most 
heartily this. It only proves that Christianity has raised 
our standard of excellence and has raised the characters of 
those who embrace and follow it immeasurably above the 
highest standard and the noblest characters of the world, 
which had never heard of Christ. 

I must bring my words, my most feeble and imperfect 
words in this high argument, to a close. I have tried to 
show that the life of Christ, and the teaching of Christ, as 
we have them recorded in the most unsuspicious records, — 
records which could not possibly have been the gradual 
concoctions and concretions of subsequent times, the careful 

453 



CHRIST S TEACHING 



afterthoughts of enthusiasts or impostors j that the hfe and 
teaching of Christ were original in the highest degree, not 
calculated to attract from any pandering to prejudice or to 
passion, that they exhibit the most marvellous ideal of 
simple grandeur or grand simplicity ; that the power which 
they exercise is from no apparent effort — not even from 
reasoning and argumentation, — but from the strength 
of truth, and from their satisfaction to human want; that 
the power which they exercised, and yet exercise, is the 
greatest moral power ever tried upon man ; that they have 
raised, and yet do raise, men and nations to a greater height 
of civilization, humanity, and purity, than anything has ever 
raised them before. And I ask, How can we account for 
the fact that all this has been done by the teaching of one 
unlettered Peasant in the most despised corner of a despised 
land ? Is there any phenomenon in moral science, or in 
physical science, which demands a patient and honest 
investigation more seriously than this ? 

There are those who think the influence of Christianity is 
on the wane. I confess' I can see no sign of this ; though, 
without doubt, its enemies are many, and the wish is father 
to the thought. But I will just put my case in one other 
shape, which will more or less deal with this question of 
decay, and then I will end. 

If an assembly of 500 or 1,000 persons could be gathered 

454 



AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD, 

together, in any city of Europe, or European America, it 
being provided that all of them should be intelligent, well- 
educated, high-principled, and well-living men and women ; 
and if the question were put to each of them, " To what 
influences do you attribute your high character, your moral 
and social excellence?" I feel no doubt that nineteen out 
of twenty of them would, on reflection, reply, " To the 
influence of Christianity on my education, my conscience, 
and my heart." I will suppose a yet further question to be 
put to them, and it shall be this : " If you were to be assured 
that the object you hold dearest on earth would be taken 
from you to-morrow, and if at the same time you could be 
assured with undoubting certainty that Jesus Christ was a 
myth or an impostor, and His Gospel a fable and a false- 
hood, whether of the two assurances would strike upon 
your heart with the more chilling and more hope-destroying 
misery?" And I believe that nine-tenths of the company, 
being such as I have stipulated they should be, would 
answer, " Take from me my best earthly treasure, but leave 
me my hope in the Saviour of the world." This is the 
effect produced upon the most civilized nations of the world 
by the teaching of four years, and the agony of a few hours, 
of One who lived as a peasant, and died as a malefactor and 
a slave. "Whence had this man this wisdom and these 
mighty works ?" 

455 



THE COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY 

OF THE 

EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

BY THE 

REV. F. C. COOK, M.A., 

CANON OF EXETER ; PREACHER AT LINCOLN'S INN. 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY 



OF THE 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



The evidences of Christianity form a department of sacred 
literature of vast extent, to which the most valuable con- 
tributions have been m.ade in ages when the faith of the 
Church was most vehemently assailed, and her powers were 
developed by severe and protracted struggles. 

It was the subject to which the ablest Christian writers of 
the first three centuries devoted their energies, carrying on 
in no alien spirit the work of the Apostles, meeting 
assailants at every point, demolishing with comparative 
ease the fabric of heathen superstition ; winning a nobler 
and more fertile triumph over the intellect of Greece. Nor 
was the work thus well begun wholly intermitted during 
the ages which intervened between the overthrow of ancient, 
and the full development of modern, civilization; a civili- 
zation which owes whatever it has of life and power to its 

459 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

reception and assimilation of Christian principles.* But, 
as might be expected, the work had to be begun anew, 
new difficulties were to be met, new victories were to be 
achieved, when the spiritual and intellectual energies of 
Europe were set free by the vast upheaval of mind at the 
Reformation. The way was opened by representative 
men. Grotlus, who combined in a most remarkable degree 
the accurate and profound learning and the clear dis- 
passionate judgment characteristic of his countrymen, pro- 
duced the first complete treatise, "Z><? Veritate ChristiancB 
ReligioiiisJ'' soon adopted as the standard work by Pro- 
testants, translated into every language of Europe, and by 
our own Pocock into Arabic, for the use of the East. 
England followed early in the field, and in the last century 
fairly won the place, which she still retains, among the 
foremost champions of the Cross. Nor did the persecution 
which arrested the progress of the Reformation in France, 
then, as ever, unhappy in her struggles for light and air, 
suppress the workings of spiritual thought. Of all advocates 
of the faith, none penetrated more deeply into its founda- 
tion, none ascended with a stronger flight or keener vision 
into its highest sphere, none combined more varied gifts ot 

* Midway stands Anselm, the father of modem metaphysics, with the 
scientific demonstration of the two fundamental truths of all religion, 
the existence of God and the Incarnation. 

460 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



intellect and spirit than Pascal, a name bright with the 
gracious gleam of letters, dear to " science," dearest above 
all to Christian truth.* Germany, too, great in every field 
of intellectual power, has not been unmindful of the duty 
of maintaining and defending the deposit of truth — a duty 
specially incumbent upon her as first leader in the revolt 
against usurped authority — not wholly unmindful, though 
as yet she is far from having discharged her debt to Chris- 
tendom, of late years perplexed and harassed by her reckless 
abuse of power. Still in the past, among other great names, 
Leibnitz, who represents, perhaps more fully than any one 
man, the peculiar characteristics of German intellect, laid 
the foundations of a system, in which the true relation 
between the Christian revelation and God's universe is ex- 
amined. And at this present hour men sound in the faith, 
full of the love and light of Christ, are bringing the re- 
sources of profound learning and vigorous intellect to bear 
upon the chaotic turmoil of anti-Christian influences. Within 
this present year several works have appeared in which 
infidelity is confronted, both in the sphere of general culti- 
vation, and in the abstrusest fastnesses of philosophy, by 
Luthardt, Steinmeyer, and Delitzsch.f One of the greatest 

* Pascal, " Fragmens d'une Apologie du Christianisme, " in the 2nd 
vol. of " Pensees du Blaise Pascal." Paris, 1814. 

f Luthardt (Apologetische Vortrage, in two parts), presents in a form 
peculiarly adapted for general readers, a very complete survey both of 

461 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

works at present incumbent upon the Church of Christ is to 
bring together into a compact and systematic body the re- 
sults of previous investigations, which from their very extent 
are inaccessible to the generality of inquirers. It is a work 
for which this society has been formed ; it will only be 
accomplished by the combined efforts of men varying in 
gifts and powers, but animated alike by one spirit of fealty 
and love to our Lord. 

On this occasion I propose, with all possible brevity, 
to show that those evidences of Christianity which are 
accessible to every careful inquirer are complete and 
adequate ; complete inasmuch as they meet the fair re- 
quirements of our moral and rational nature, and ade- 
quate with reference to their purpose, which, is to bring 
us into contact with the central and fundamental truths 
of our religion, and with the Person of its Founder. It 
may be assumed that persons who meet to consider the 
evidences of revealed religion have previously satisfied 
themselves of the existence and the personality of God ; 

tlie internal and external evidences. Steinnieyer, Apologetische Vor- 
trage, in three parts, discusses the historical evidence for the miracles, 
the death and the resurrection of our Lord, with special reference to the 
latest criticisms. Dehtzsch's System der Christlichen Apologetilc is of a 
more exchisively philosophical and dogmatic character. It has been 
reviewed in the Studien u. Kritiken, by Dr. Sack, of Bonn, whose own 
work, Christliche Apologetik, 1 841, is one of the best on the whole sub- 
ject of evidences. 

462 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 



or at least that they have not accepted the theory, 
once deemed too irrational to need refutation, that the 
universe is but an assemblage of forces, self-existent, and un- 
controlled by a conscious will. That is a question ante- 
cedent to our present inquiry. It would be useless to 
discuss the proofs of a supernatural intervention with one 
who held that there is no supernatural power to intervene. 
Materialism under any form, and Christianity in any stage, 
are mutually exclusive. They are not even, properly 
speaking, antagonistic ; since antagonism implies a common 
field of action, and the recognition of some principle to 
which disputants can appeal. We can only argue now 
with those who admit the possibility of a revelation, and 
are therefore willing to examine the evidences, and to 
accept the conclusions to which those evidences may lead. 

Our first object will be to see what conclusions are fairly 
drawn from those broad facts which first present themselves 
in the history of Christianity, and which no one thinks of 
disputing. Put yourselves, if possible, in the position of 
an inquirer to whom the facts might be new, and who had 
simply to satisfy himself as to their bearings upon his own 
convictions and upon the state of man. 

Here is one fact. At the central point of the world's 
history, central both in time and in historical import, equi- 
distant from the end of what men are agreed to call the 

463 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 



prehistoric period and our own time, the man Jesus arose, 
and claimed to be, in a sense altogther apart from other 
men, the teacher and the Saviour of the world. He claimed a 
direct mission from God, — nay, more, to be, in a sense here- 
after to be ascertained, the Son of God. He assumed that 
the truth which He had to teach was new, inasmuch as 
it was one which man could not discover for himself, but at 
the same time one to which man's conscience would bear 
testimony, which could not therefore be rejected without sin. 
As credentials of His mission, He appealed to works which 
those who accepted Him and those who opposed Him ad- 
mitted could not be wrought without supernatural aid.* To 
one work, as the crowning work of all. He directed His 
followers to appeal, as one capable of being attested, and 
incapable of being explained away, even His own resurrec- 
tion from the dead. 

And now observe, the fact of this assumption, quite inde- 
pendent of the evidence by which it was supported, stands 
absolutely alone in the world's history. Consider the exist- 
ing religions of the world. Three are associated with the 
names of individuals as their founders. Of Mahomet we 
need not speak. His doctrine was avowedly derived from 

* It is well known that both Jews and Gentiles admitted that the 
works were wrought, though they denied that the power came from 
God. Superstition, then as ever, opposed the faith of which it is the 
counterfeit. 

464 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 



Judaism, he claimed no special relationship to God, nor 
did he profess to work miracles j as coming after our Lord, 
we might have expected a far nearer resemblance in pre- 
tensions advanced by himself, and to some extent at a later 
period advanced by his followers. Two other men, how- 
ever, stand before us with characteristics which attract our 
warmest interest, and enable us to understand the permanent 
influence they have exerted over the countless myriads of 
Asia. I know nothing in history more touching than the 
account of Siddartha "^ (called Sakya Monni, that is, 
monk of the royal race of the Sakyas), the founder of 
Bhuddism, whose tender and noble spirit was driven by 
the contemplation of human misery into desperate struggles 
to escape from this prison of the universe even at the cost 

* The most interesting and accessible accounts of this man are given 
by M. Barthelemi S. Hilaire, *'Le Bonddha et sa Religion ; " and by 
M. Ampere, in "La Science et les Lettres en Orient." Siddartha lived 
about the end of the seventh century, B.C. The name " Sakya Monni " 
is an appellative, meaning the monk or hermit of the Sakyas, the royal 
race to which he belonged. The true end of all philosophy and religion 
in his system is to enter into Nirvana, i. e. (according to M. Eugene 
Burnouf, the highest authority on this subject), the complete annihila- 
tion, not only of the material elements of existence, but also, and more 
specially, of the thinking principle. In this view the majority of Oriental 
scholars agree ; the few who differ, as Colebrook does, identify Nirvana 
with an endless and dreamless sleep. See M. S. Hilaire, I.e., p. 133. 
M. Ampere (p. 215) thus characterizes the system, " La fin supreme de 
I'homme a ete de perdre le sentiment de son moi, de renoncer a sa 
liberte, de s'elever au dessus des affections les plus pures, d'arriver a 
un etat, o\x il ne restat plus que le vide. " 



465 30 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

of personal annihilation ; but observe this, he did not even 
profess to support his strange gospel of despair by assertions 
or attestations which would necessarily imply the personality 
of God, and His sovereignty over the universe. If, again, you 
consult the four books in which Confucius * sets forth with 
singular simplicity and force the great principles of moral 
truth, you will find that he never presents them as revela- 
tions, as a message supematurally imparted or attested, but 
as evolutions of man's inner conscience, as the product of a 
faculty inherent equally in all. Seekers after truth, honest, 
earnest, and noble seekers, to whom no Christian should 
refuse a tribute of admiration, the world has produced, but 
you will find no one man, save Jesus only, among the 
founders of existing religions, no one indeed within the his- 
toric period, who ever professed to be the giver of a tmth 
at once absolutely new and attested by works such as God 
only could enable him to perform. 

* The four boolcs of Khung-fu-tseu were written in the second half of 
the sixth century, B.C. They contain the religions and philosophy of 
China in a dogmatic form. The second book, called " Tchung jamg," 
represents most fully his moral code, of which the principle is obedience 
to natural reason, and the rule is obser\'ance of the 7'ia media, with due 
regard to times and circumstances. In one passage, ccxi. , iv. , Confucius 
says a man of strong virtue goes beyond this via media which prescribes 
indifference and exact conformity to natural law. For a just appre- 
ciation of the Confucian system, the reader may consult M. Ampere, 
" La Science et les Lettres en Orient," p. 98 ff. 

466 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



And now consider this fact. The appearance of this 
man Jesus, unparalleled as it is shown to have been, was 
nevertheless expected. At present I have not to show that 
His person, His offices, His work, together with their 
permanent effect, had actually been foretold, or that the 
predictions referred to Him as accomplisher of a divine 
purpose ; but this we know, as a fact beyond controversy, 
that when He began to teach and work, his countrymen 
were familiar with a long series of texts, beginning with the 
first, and continued to the end, of their sacred books, in 
which they recognized descriptions of such a teacher. You 
will remember that those descriptions included all particulars 
by which an individual could be identified. As for their 
accurate coincidence with what is recorded of our Lord, it 
is scarcely necessary to argue, since our ablest opponents 
hold that it is too close to be accounted for, save on the 
supposition that the records, whether consciously or uncon- 
sciously, were moulded so to produce the conformity. With 
that theory Mr. Row and others have dealt. I do not 
believe that it is likely to retain a hold on the minds of 
our countrymen, but it is a most striking attestation to 
an all-important fact which I request you most seriously 
to weigh, remembering that of this man Jesus alone in tlie 
world's history can it be asserted that such an expectation 

existed. 

467 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

The next fact, again, is so obvious that men are in real 
danger of overlooking its significance. The faith in this 
Man took root. It took root at once, and so deeply that 
storms which might have sufficed to tear up any human 
institution, served only to fix it more firmly. This Man 
died, His followers were hounded to the death, man's 
passions, man's superstitions, man's intellect, during centuries 
of struggle, were opposed to this religion, and yet ft pre- 
vailed. Will you say it did not prevail universally ? Well, 
what is its actual extent ? I answer, it is co-extensive with 
the civilization of the world. Is this assertion too strong? 
Look at the facts. Beyond the pale of Christendom, the 
great races of humanity, which in past ages have shown 
equal capacities for the highest culture, have at this present 
time no single representative nation, Turanian, Semitic, or 
Aryan, in which liberty, philosophy, nay, even physical 
science, with its serene indifference to moral or spiritual truth, 
have a settled home or practical development. The elements 
of civilization are there, capable undoubtedly of being evoked 
and energized, but as a plain matter of fact at this present 
time, after thousands of years for development, throughout 
the vast regions of Islamism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, 
not to speak of lower forms of paganism, they are stunted, 
distorted, and, to all human ken, in hopeless and chaotic 
ruin. It would not be dificult to prove that the special 

468 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



evils which have choked the human mind, and bhghted its 
energies, are in each case distinctly traceable to evils 
inherent in those rehgious systems j but we are dealing now 
with facts not depending upon argument, nor demanding 
lengthened inquiries. It suffices to state the bare fact that 
the religion of the crucified Jesus, with its doctrines that 
were a stumbling-block to the Jews, and foolishness to the 
Gentiles, is at this day conterminous with human progress, 
with all advance in liberty, science, and social culture, with 
all that is substantially precious in the civilization of the 
world. 

To these facts others might be added of a similar cha- 
racter, such as the recognition of our Lord Jesus as the true 
Master and Teacher of the world, by men acknowledged in 
every age of Christendom to be conspicuous for moral 
worth and intellectual power; such, again, as the pre-eminence 
in Christendom, in every age, of nations which profess at 
least to acknowledge Him as their Lord, and as the 
rapid disintegration or ruin of communities which have 
corrupted or abjured His religion. But the broadest 
and simplest facts thus stated are sufficient for the one 
purpose we have now in view; sufficient to induce every 
one who cares to know the truth to go at once to 
that Man, to ask what He has to teach. The inquirer 
will do this, as I should think, before he enters into 

469 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

the lengthened and very difficult inquiry into the origin 
or interpretation of the predictions or the words of 
which we have spoken. He will do it because, after all, no 
evidence has anything approaching the weight which 
attaches to the personal influence of a teacher, in this case, 
of one who declares Himself to be ready to receive in- 
quirers, and to satisfy their wants, who claims to be the 
living and ever-present Teacher of man. The inquirer will 
certainly do this if he feels the same moral wants, and 
experiences the same moral difficulties and perplexities 
which beset the most thoughtful heathen before the coming 
of this Man ; feelings well expressed in the Phsedo of Plato 
by Simmias, a good representative of sturdy, even sceptical, 
but thoroughly honest seekers after truth. These are his 
words : " It seems to me, Socrates, as probably to you also, 
that to know the certainty about such questions in this 
present life is a thing either impossible or exceedingly 
difficult ; yet that, nevertheless, not to test thoroughly what- 
ever is said about them, or to desist until we have done our 
utmost by inquiring in every direction, would be sheer 
cowardice. For some one at least of the following 
results we ought to attain about them, either to learn from 
others how the truth stands, or discover it for ourselves ; or, 
if neither should be possible, then, at any rate, to take the 
best and most irrefragable of human theories, and use it as 

470 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



a raft, so to speak, to convey us, though in much danger, 
through the sea of Hfe_, unless, indeed, one were enabled to 
accomplish the passage, with no risk of error or mishap, upon 
the firmer conveyance of a word from God."* 

The question now meets us. How can we be sure that we 
have His teaching ? Where can we find His own words ? 
\\niere can we learn what He really did ? Have we a 
thoroughly trustworthy, not to say unquestioned, record of 
the words He uttered ? of the works He is asserted to have 
wrought ? 

Now there can be no doubt, that of all assaults upon the 
faith, the most effective in this age are those which have 
been made upon the documents which compose the New 
Testament. The reason for this is obvious. An investiga- 
tion into the authenticity of any ancient book demands an 
amount of knowledge and critical ability, a soundness and 
keenness of judgment, which are the very rarest of qualifica- 
tions. Turn to secular literature, and you will find critics 
arguing for ages, without any approximation to a settlement, 
touching the genuineness of works attributed to men whose '' 
peculiarities of genius and of style would seem to defy imi- 
tation. Who would venture on his own judgment to deter- 
mine how much of the Homeric poems belong to 

* For a very remarkable echo of this passage, showing the depth and 
permanence of such feelings, see the words of Mr. Hutton, quoted 
further on. 



471 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

**That Lord of loftiest song, 
Who above others Hke an eagle soars ? " 

"Quel Signer dell' altissimo canto, 
Che sovra gli altri com' aquila vola. " * 

Look at the controversy between Grote, Jowett, and the 
latest German critics touching the authenticity of no small 
portion of the Platonic dialogues. Taken simply as a 
question of critical inquiry, no man of sense would venture 
to determine, on internal data, the authorship of any book 
in the New Testament, without years of laborious prepara- 
tion. I will add, no prudent man at all conversant with the 
history of criticism would accept assertions, however confi- 
dent, of critics whose known and avowed prepossessions 
would make it d priori certain that they would be averse 
to the acceptance of documents which, if genuine, supply 
substantial grounds for belief in supernatural works and a 
supernatural Person. 

What then are we to do? Well, in the first place we 
may inquire whether any portion of the documents in that 
book is admitted to be wholly unaffected by the corrosive 
solvent of negative criticism. This will give us at once a 
most important set of documents, no less than those epistles 
of St. Paul f which contain the fullest exposition of Christ's 

* Dante, Inferno, c. iv. 

f Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians, accepted by all the Tiibingen 
School. (See Mr. Leathes' lecture.) 

472 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



doctrine, and the most explicit statements of the supernatu- 
ral facts on which that doctrine is based ; above all, the fact 
of the Resurrection. There you will find Christ speaking, 
according to His own promise, by His Spirit. But we are 
not to be cheated of our heritage by a criticism of which the 
main negative results are repudiated, not only by all who 
believe in any form or degree of objective revelation, but 
by a great majority of avowed rationalists. One by one we 
recover, with their concurrence, the other general epistles of 
St. Paul, the first of St. Peter and of St. John, the Gospel of 
St. Mark, the discourses in St. Matthew, the two treatises of 
St. Luke, and, though hotly contested, as might be expected, 
considering its vital importance, still triumphantly, and I do 
not fear to say irrevocably, secured, attested by external 
evidence ever more perfect, and by internal evidence * daily 
more convincing, as you can witness, the Gospel of St. John. 
I might go farther still, and point to the reception of nearly 
all contested portions by some or other of our opponents, and 
show the cogency of the reasons which overcame deep-seated 

* In addition to the well-known work of Tischendorf, and German, 
French, and English commentaries, attention may be called to a valu- 
able treatise by P. H. de Groot, of Groningen, "Basilides als erster 
Zeuge des Johannesevangeliums." Leipzig, 1868. The internal evidence 
has already been discussed by Dr. Lightfoot, who promises a complete 
treatise on the subject, with which no one can deal more effectively. 
Some good points are made by Mr. Hutton in Essays, vol, i. 

473 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

prejudices ; but it is sufficient for our immediate purpose to 
argue ex concessis. If we take at first those books only which 
the severest critics, with the exception of certain scholars 
of the Tubingen school hold to be indisputable, we have 
Christ before us, the characteristics of His Personality, the 
cardinal events of His life, the subject matter of His teaching. 
Even Keim and Renan admit that His mark is unmistakably 
stamped upon those discourses to which every inquirer will na- 
turally turn at once, when he seeks to know what Jesus taught. 
And here let me speak out frankly my own opinion. The 
whole result of inquiry into the truth of Christianity will 
depend upon the effect produced upon you by the Person- 
ality of Jesus Christ. If a careful study of His words, of 
His works, does not constrain you to recognize in Him a 
divine Teacher, if it does not lead you to discern the Being 
in whom alone humanity attained to that ideal perfection of 
which philosophers had ever dreamed, but of which they 
deemed that the realization was impossible, nay, more, a 
Being in whom the moral and spiritual attributes of Deity, 
perfect holiness, and perfect love, were manifested, then 
indeed I admit, nay, I am in truth convinced, that no other 
evidences will have any real or permanent effect upon your 
spirit. The completeness of those evidences may fill your 
minds with anxious questionings, their adequacy may leave 
you without excuse for their rejection; but without a per- 

474 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 



sonal influence they will also leave you cold, and in a posi- 
tion, if not of outward antagonism, yet of inward alienation. 
If, on the other hand, you accept Jesus as your Teacher 
and Master, simply and wholly because He has won your 
heart and conquered your spirit, then all other evidences 
will fall into their proper place j they will not be set aside, 
contemned, or neglected — had they been needless, they 
would not have been given — but they will be used as sub- 
sidiary and supplementary ; enabling you to give a reason 
for the faith which is in you, both for your own satisfaction, 
and for the defence and advancement of Christian truth. 
The one great evidence, the master evidence, the evidence 
with which all other evidences will stand or fall, is Christ 
Himself speaking by His own word. 

Our first endeavour must therefore be to acquire a dis- 
tinct and, so far as may be possible, a complete conception 
of the personal character of Jesus Christ. Here, however, 
we are met by the question, Are we to consider Him 
at first in His human nature separately, or must we, in 
order to appreciate Him truly, contemplate Him at once 
in the completeness of His Personality, combining the 
human with the divine ? I answer, not without some hesi- 
tation, that the line seems pointed out by Holy Scripture. 
We are told there that His nature is twofold, that in Him we 
see God in man, that the whole work which He came to 

475 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

accomplish depended upon that nature ; but, on the other 
hand, we find that the form in which He presented Himself 
to His contemporaries, and through the medium of historical 
records to the Church, in which and by which He drew 
mankind to Himself, was thoroughly human; and so it 
seems to me clear that our first duty must be to collect from 
the Gospel narrative all the characteristic traits of His 
humanity, and so learn to know Him as perfect man. We 
may or may not avail ourselves of external help in this part 
of the inquiry ; but if we do, the utmost caution and dis- 
crimination will be needed. It is certain that all so-called 
lives of Jesus are written under some kind of prepossession, 
and convey impressions which, however fair and honest 
they may be, have a strong colouring of personal feelings. 
Doubtless by such lives as those by Neander, Baumgarten, 
Pressense, not to speak of the " Ecce Homo," a student 
may have his attention drawn to traits which he might 
otherwise fail to appreciate : but I believe that, until the 
mind is saturated with the truth set forth with all plainness 
and in all completeness in Scripture, the loss will outweigh 
the gain. I do not say that, in an advanced stage of 
inquiry, those among us especially who have to consult the 
wants of other minds, may not profitably resort to these and 
similar writings for supplementary information or sugges- 
tions : but this observation is to some extent true of other 

476 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



works in which the false infinitely preponderates over the 
true ; and if you once go outside of the Gospels for aid in 
the natural attempt to gain an independent position as an 
impartial inquirer, you may entangle yourself in the subtle 
webs of sophistry, such as are woven by Renan, Keim, 
or Strauss. Speaking indeed of Pressense's work on our 
Saviour's life, which, on the whole, approaches most nearly 
to a faithful and complete portraiture, a friend remarkable for 
sound strong sense remarked to me that a careful perusal 
served but to convince him of the needlessness of such 
remouldings of the sacred history. And for my own part, I 
do not hesitate to say that you will act most wisely if you 
keep to the gospel narrative exclusively until you have 
ascertained to your own satisfaction what are the true 
characteristics of our Lord. I do not entertain any doubt 
as to the result. No healthy moral nature ever came into 
contact with that .Personality without recognizing its unap- 
proached and unapproachable excellence. Nay, I will add, 
no human heart susceptible of tender or noble emotions 
ever fixed its gaze upon Jesus without acknowledging in 
Him the embodiment of love. Attestations to this effect 
might be adduced in abundance from writings of men who 
have passed their lives in ineffectual efforts to extricate 
themselves from the perplexity arising from their inability to 
reconcile that impression with their intellectual system : but 

477 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

we need no testimony from without. Go to Christ, hear 
Him speak, watch His actions, and you will have an 
evidence, at once complete and adequate, that in Him was 
a human nature which, in its entire freedom from all moral 
evil, and in its perfect development of all moral goodness, 
stands absolutely alone. 

You may say this is mere assumption. I can only answer, 
You have to judge for yourselves. I do not profess to draw 
out the evidence, but simply to show what is its nature, and 
where it is to be found. I do not attempt to delineate that 
character ; at the utmost, I could but give you but a very 
imperfect account of the impression which it has made on 
my own very imperfect nature. I simply assert that the 
evidence is there, and that upon you rests the responsibility 
of examining it. Its effect, as I doubt not, will depend 
upon your moral nature ; not indeed upon your moral 
goodness — Christ speaks to sinners — but upon your moral 
susceptibility, your capacity to discern and appreciate moral 
goodness. If that character does not attract, subdue, and 
win you, I freely admit all other evidence will be useless so 
far as your innermost convictions are concerned. But 
numerous as are the cases o individuals who have remained 
in, or relapsed into, a state of scepticism from various 
causes, intellectual or moral, few indeed are the cases of 
men who have not borne with them into that dreary region 

478 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



an abiding sense of the personal and supreme goodness 
of Jesus. 

But the more carefully you examine that character, the 
more forcibly you will be struck by the fact that this Man, 
of whom the most special and most distinctive characteris- 
tics are absolute truthfulness and absolute humility, speaks 
throughout with an authority which involves the assumption 
of a divine nature. This statement does not rest on parti- 
cular texts open to misconstruction or evasion, but on the 
tenor of each and every discourse, on His acts not less than 
His words. He addresses man as man's Master ; He speaks 
as the Son of God, as one with God. This fact is stated 
in strong, not to say irreverent, terms by the author of 
" Ecce Homo " : " During His whole public life Jesus is 
distinguished from the other prominent characters of Jew- 
ish history by His unbounded personal pretensions." Two 
writers, differing widely in tone of mind, but alike in 
depth of thought and earnestness of purpose, prove, were 
proof needed, that those pretensions are justified by the 
truth of the Incarnation, and by that alone. (See the Rev. 
M. F. Sadler, " Immanuel," pp. 264 — 309 ; and Mr. Hutton's 
" Essay on the Incarnation.") You will, in fact, soon find 
that you have no alternative but either to give up all that has 
wrought itself into your moral nature, and int wined itself 
around the fibres of your affections, all your convictions of 

479 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

the moral excellence of Jesus, or to accept Him, even as 
He presents Himself, the God-man. His enemies felt this. 
They persecuted Him because He made Himself, as they 
said truly, equal with God. They crucified Him because 
He claimed the powers and attributes of the Son of God. 
Modem sceptics of loftier strain feel this keenly. They 
might be content to accept Him as a moral teacher ; for, in 
that case, they could deal with Him as their equal by 
nature, receiving or rejecting His teaching as it might accord 
or not with their own judgment; if they reject Him. it is 
simply or mainly, as they will tell you, because He claims to 
be more than man, and, as they well know, to be no less than 
God. They ask (perhaps you will ask), how did He justify 
the claim ? The answer, of course, involves the whole con- 
troversy ; but I will once more state my own conviction. 
If you put yourselves under His teaching. He will not leave 
you in doubt. You will attain by degrees only to any real 
appreciation of His human goodness; but together with 
the growth of that appreciation will dawn upon you the 
consciousness, ever increasing in clearness and intensity, 
that in Him you are gazing upon the Incarnate God. You 
will have a twofold evidence : the evidence of a perfectly 
logical conviction, founded on sure inferences from sure 
premises, upon the inseparability of truth and goodness, 
self-knowledge and perfect wisdom, and the evidence of 

480 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



direct intuition ; you will feel yourselves in the presence of 
God. 

And now let me read a passage which is a very remark- 
able attestation to the effect produced upon a man of strong 
sense and thorough independence of character, by an 
honest and reverent study of our Lord's Person and teach- 
ing. You will find it in the treatise on the Incarnation, 
published within the last few months, in Mr. Hutton's 
Essays : " And now let me honestly ask myself, and an- 
swer the question as truly as I can, whether this great, this 
stupendous fact of the Incarnation is honestly believable 
by an ordinary man of modern times, who has not been 
educated into it, but educated to distrust it j who has no 
leaning to the orthodox creed, as such, but has generally 
preferred to associate with heretics ; who is quite alive to the 
force of the scientific and literary criticisms of his day ; who 
has no antiquarian tastes, no predilection for the venerable 
past; who does not regard this truth as part of a great 
system, dogmatic or ecclesiastical, but merely for itself; who 
is, in a word, simply anxious to take hold, if he so may, of 
any divine hand stretched out to help him through the 
excitement and the languor, the joy, the sorrow, the storm 
and sunshine, of this unintelligible life. From my heart I 
answer, Yes — believable, and more than believable, in any 

mood in which we can rise above ourselves to that super- 

481 31 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

natural spirit which orders the unruly wills and affections of 
sinful men ; 7nore than believable, I say, because it so vivifies 
and supplements that fundamental faith in God as to realize 
what were else abstract, and, without dissolving the mystery, 
to clothe eternal love with breathing life."* 

Let me call your attention to the remarkable resemblance, 
of which I believe the writer to have been unconscious,' 
between these most striking words and those which I quoted 
from Plato. What the ancient inquirer longed for, but sought 
in vain, the modern has sought and found, and with it the 
one and the only imaginable solution of the mystery of life. 

I speak to persons able to bring the stores of varied 
reading to bear upon these questions, and we live in a time 
when learning has fairly rivalled science in bringing regions 
of thought hitherto unknown, or kno-svn only to solitary 
students, within the cognizance of men of general culti- 
vation. As a matter of a deep interest and importance, I 
would ask you, when you have attained to a complete 
conception of our Lord's Person, to compare His teaching 
with that of men whose influence has been most widely 
and abidingly felt in the world. I will not insult our 
Master by placing His name in juxtaposition with the 
founder of Islamism, nor indeed would it fairly enter into 
the inquiry; for if you separate the elements of truth 

* Essays Theological and Literary, by R. H. Hutton; vol. i., p. 282. 

482 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 



derived from Judaism and from Christianity, through the 
medium of a corrupt tradition, the Koran v/ill yield you* 
but a mass of idle legends. It is indeed the fashion at 
present to speak of Mahomet as ''a great and genuine 
prophet, with a Dinne mission " (see Button's Essays, i. 
p. 277). Now I do not doubt his sincerity at the begin- 
ning of his career, or his steadfast adherence to the one 
great truth which he proclaimed j but it must never be 
forgotten that he invented a special revelation to justify 
indulgence in his master-sin (see the Koran, c. 66), and 
that he commanded the propagation of his religion by the 
sword. There are, however, three great names connected 
with those mighty revolutions of thought which have per- 
manently affected the moral or religious convictions of 
mankind ; I speak of them specially, because their character 
and teaching were wholly uninfluenced by revelation, and 
because they severally represent the highest development of 
pre-Christian character : Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates. 
Of two I have already spoken, and will now simply refer 
you to the clear and impartial accounts given by Ampere, 
Francke, and Barthelemi St. Hilaire, to justify my statement, 
that although, as might be expected, in some points of 
their moral teaching and in their spiritual aspirations they 
bear a true resemblance to Him in whom human nature 
was perfectly represented, yet each of them differed; as 

483 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

indeed all other men differ, from Him, in one special 
characteristic ; each of them is the creature of his race and 
of his age ; the influence of each is felt in the full develop- 
ment of the peculiar tendencies of his own section of the 
human family; in the one case, of physical languor and 
mental dreaminess ; in the other, of a formal and con- 
ventional morality, and of political unity secured by the 
sacrifice of all independent action and thought. I turn to 
Socrates. There is a special reason why we should direct 
our attention to his character. It has at various times 
been brought into comparison with that of our Lord ; even 
when that comparison is not distinctly brought out^ it is 
often intentionally, -or it may be unintentionally, suggested. 
That character has been delineated by Mr. Jowett, in the 
prefaces of his translation of the Platonic dialogues, with a 
sagacity beyond all praise, wdth an impartiality which 
trenches upon indifference, not merely in questions of merely 
speculative interest, but of moral concernment.* It is a 
noble work, representing the labour of long years devoted 
almost exclusively to the study of the master-mind of 
Greece. Socrates there stands before us. We enter into 

* Notice tlie faint condemnation, if it be a condemnation at all, of the 
peculiar shame of Athens, as ' ' greatly at variance with modem and 
Christian notions, but in accordance with Hellenic sentiment" (vol. i., 
p. 482, and compare p. 555). 

484 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



his thoughts, we know him as a Hving man. His character 
may indeed have undergone some change of representation 
in passing through the mind of the most imaginative of 
human teachers, his greatest disciple, Plato; but it is a 
<^hange which does but magnify and idealize his loftiest 
characteristics. Let us see, then, in what respects this 
wisest and best of men, this teacher whom the great Fathers 
of Christendom justly reverenced as a true though uncon- 
scious preparer of men's spirits for the coming Teacher, 
resembles, in what respects, not less than the other two, he 
especially differs, from our Lord. 

This strikes us at a glance. Socrates is altogether and 
throughout a Greek. His intellect, his character, is Greek. 
The stamp of an exclusive nationality is upon him. He has 
the feelings, the prejudices, of a singularly exclusive section 
of an exclusive race. His code of morals tolerates, I will not 
say sanctions, habits and feelings " quite at variance," as Mr. 
Jowett says, "with modern and Christian nofions." Characters 
moulded to a great extent under his influence became living 
embodiments of some of the worst characteristics of heathen- 
ism, of force, pride (vj3pig), and licentiousness, as, for instance, 
Critias, Charmides, and Alcibiades. Exquisite and perfect 
as was his sympathy with all that was noble, all that was 
graceful and beautiful in Hellenic culture, it went no further. 

Graces which to the Christian are the very foundation of 

485 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

spiritualist life, had no place, no name even, in his philo- 
sophy. I cannot recall, among all his sayings, one that 
expresses sympathy with man in his extremest degradation 
and misery, or indignation with his countrymen for their 
treatment of their slaves. I would not be unjust. I 
never turn to the pages in which his spirit breathes 
without recognizing its attractions for the lover of man 
and the seeker after God ; but still the fact remains, and 
stands out more clearly the more fully that spirit is 
made known, that Socrates, in his best and in his worst 
characteristics, was out and out an Athenian by character, 
by temperament, by moral sympathy, and by religion also, 
not less than Confucius was a Chinese, and Siddartha a 
Hindoo. 

I touch briefly on another important point. Socrates was 
a true, honest, earnest seeker after truth. I give this high 
praise unreservedly. As such, he represents the best tenden- 
cies of Gentile thought. As an honest seeker he had the 
fitting reward. So far as his search was not impeded b}'" 
moral causes to which I have alluded, it was successful. 
He apprehended and taught truths of infinite value. But 
note this ; he had not, did not profess to have, definite con- 
victions upon the most important of all truths. Mr. Jowett 
says deliberately,* and as I think truly, " Socrates cannot 

* See the preface to the Republic, in vol. ii. Compare also the words 

486 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



be proved to have believed in the immortaHty of the soul." 
His speculations concerning a future state of retribution, 
recorded doubtless with a considerable admixture of Platon- 
ism in the Phaedo, are deeply interesting ; but they are 
speculations only, resting partly on grounds of which he 
recognises the insufficiency, or of which we cannot doubt 
the unsoundness. Socrates gave what he found. He sought 
for life and immortality j he drew very near to the region 
where they are to be found ; he prepared the spirit of man 
for their announcement ; but he did not bring them to light 
That was the work of Him who at once declares the truth, 
and justifies its reception. 

And now, keeping these characteristics in mind, let 
me ask you to consider them in reference to our Lord's 
teaching. One of our most popular and graceful writers 
— the Dean of Westminster — has done good service to the 
truth by pointing out repeatedly the very conspicuous and 
utterly peculiar characteristic of the Saviour, that He is 
wholly devoid of national exclusiveness. This is the more 
striking since His birth and all the circumstances of His 
early life would naturally have imbued Him with the pre- 

of Socrates on his trial (p. 40 in the Greek, vol. i., p. 354, Jowett) ; they 
probably represent his views more truly than the brilliant speculations 
in the Phsedo. One alternative which he seems disposed to accept, 
viz., that death may be " a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed 
by dreams," resembles very nearly the Nirvana of Buddhism. 

487 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

judices of the most exclusive of all nations : a nation which 
was intended to be exclusive, which could only fulfil its 
special mission by exclusiveness. Mr. Hutton puts this 
with his usual force, but somewhat harshly : " To trust in 
Him really, to believe that He can help us to reduce the 
vulgar chaos of our English life to any order resting on 
an eternal basis, is far easier if we believe that the very 
same mind is shining on our consciences which entered 
into the poorest of lots among nearly the most de- 
graded generation of the most narrow-minded race that 
the world has ever known, and made it the birth- 
place of a new earth" (Essays, vol. i., p. 283). Christ 
speaks ever to man as man ; His words find an echo in 
universal consciousness ; in Him there is neither Jew nor 
Gentile, and, nofe specially this pointy neither bond nor 
free. 

At this point, however, we may be met with an objection 
which has been presented with considerable skill, and ap- 
pears to have seriously affected the judgment of inquirers. 
It is asserted that, after all, our Lord was but a Jewish 
Rabbi; differing indeed in some remarkable characteristics 
from other teachers of the synagogue, but only to an extent 
which may be accounted for, partly by His position and 
education, and the influence of Essenian principles, partly 

by peculiarity of nature and gifts which our opponents ad- 

488 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



mit to have been of the highest order, marking Him, as they 
would say, as a man of transcendent genius, one of the 
few in the world's history in whom men are compelled to 
recognise a master of the soul. Hebrew writers of great 
learning, by whom this notion is gladly accepted, in their ef- 
forts to establish it have done signal if unwitting service to 
our cause. They have enabled readers of general culture 
and unbiassed judgment to ascertain for themselves some 
important facts which were formerly known thoroughly to 
those only who had sufficient learning and leisure to enable 
them to penetrate into the depths of Rabbinical literature, 
the most intricate and repulsive which human labour ever 
produced. It is now comparatively easy to ascertain what 
was the true character of the Jewish Rabbi, and of Rab- 
binical teaching ; what, too, was the special character of the 
Essenian teaching,'" at and about the period when our Lord 
impressed Plis stamp upon the mind of man. Now I would 
challenge any controversialist to deny that our Lord's 
teaching differed from that of all the Rabbis, not merely in 
degree, but in kind. It differed in principle, in its pro- 
cesses, in its results, in its tone, its spirit, in every essential 
characteristic. This was felt at once by His hearers : the 

Ritschl shows very conclusively that the Essenian principle was 
even more exclusive than the Rabbinical, and more antagonistic in 
principle to Christianity. See Altkatholische Kirche, pp. 179 — 203. 

489 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

first and most abiding impression made upon the mass of 
His countrymen was that He taught nof as the scribes. 
This was the secret of the attraction which drew and re- 
tained disciples. " Where shall we go ? Thou hast the words 
of eternal life." This was the cause of the fierce antagonism 
on the part of the Rabbis. They felt that His system was 
incompatible with their own. The scribe, as such, was a 
mechanical instrument ; his authority was that of the system 
under which he worked, he held the minds of his hearers 
bound down and crippled by fetters by which he was him- 
self bound even more tightly. Properly speaking, he was 
not even an interpreter of the lav/, with the principles of 
which he was little concerned, but simply a referee on 
points of casuistry or of formal observance which had been 
settled in past ages. The one merit which he claimed was 
that of unswerving adherence to the old customs, the old 
interpretations, the old applications of the law. Of all dis- 
qualifications for the office of a scribe, the most fatal would 
be independence of spirit, originality of thought or feeling. 
Many sayings of the Rabbis express this principle with the 
utmost naivete: e.g., "A scribe w^ill have no portion in the 
world to come, even should he be faithful to the law of God, 
and full of good works, if his teaching be not wholly in ac- 
cordance with tradition." Our Lord's charge against them, 

that they made the word of God of none effect by their 

490 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



tradition, scarcely puts this point in a stronger light than their 
declaration *' that it is highly perilous for any learned man 
to read the Bible, since he may be induced to trust to its 
guidance rather than to his teacher." For the more ad- 
vanced disciple the rule was, "that for one hour given to the 
study of the Bible, two should be devoted to the Talmud." 
When we read of different schools of Rabbis, and learn 
that they represented different tendencies, we naturally sup- 
pose that there must have been some movements of spirit, 
some struggles of moral and intellectual spontaneity. And 
it is true that between the school of Shammai and that of 
Hillel and the Gamaliels there was a wide divergence, the 
one relaxing and the other enforcing rigorous observances, 
the one encouraging, the other condemning all genial culture; 
but when we compare the teaching of the two parties which 
is fully represented in the Talmud, we see that the liberality 
of the most advanced is bounded within very narrow 
limits. Hillel, the best of all, had the spirit of his caste. 
Eternal life, according to him, was the portion of those who 
had attained to a perfect knowledge of the unwritten and 
traditional system to which he devoted his own life. 

It is quite possible to cull from the Talmud, especially 
from one section (the Pirke Aboth, i.e.^ decisions of the 
Fathers) a set of maxims which breathe a high and grave 
morality, which enjoin temperance, chastity, gentleness, love 

491 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

of country, earnestness in the study of God's law, contempt 
for wealth, celebrity, and power j but the general spirit is 
cold, formal, casuistical, and the decisions are, on the 
whole, determined by considerations of interest and ex- 
pediency. In short, errors of every kind, — errors of inter- 
pretation, errors in the foundations of moral truth, errors in 
the representation of God's attributes^ errors originating 
in the grossest superstitions, and above all in narrow, bitter, 
exclusive prejudices, — bear an overwhelming proportion to 
the whole compilation, and belong unquestionably to that 
Talmudic atmosphere in which we are told that the pure 
and lofty spirit of our Master attained its natural develop- 
ment. It is true that the second portion of the Talmud, 
the Gemara, presents those characteristics in an exaggerated 
form ; but the first part, the Mishna, is replete with a 
casuistry so trifling and repulsive as to make a continuous 
perusal almost impossible, save to one who has some special 
motive for the study. It contains not less than 4,008 
mishnaioth, that is, decisions or precepts, of which the 
largest proportion is attributed to Hillel or his followers. 
Out of this vast collection it would be difficult to fix upon 
any consecutive series of maxims, say fifty, which would 
approve themselves to the moral sense. - ■ • 

Widely as our Lord's teaching differs from that of the 
Greek or the Asiatic, far more does it differ from that of 

492 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



His Hebrew contemporaries : it belongs altogether to a 
different sphere, the sphere in which the human spirit was 
emancipated from all narrow, dark, exclusive prejudices, and 
all its powers developed by that Spirit which rested on 
Him without measure, which He received as man, and 
which He bestowed as God. 

It may be said that if the evidence supplied by know- 
ledge of the Person of our Lord be of itself complete and 
adequate for the highest purpose, further inquiries may be 
dismissed as superfluous. Nor is the remark unfair. It is, 
I believe, quite true that of the myriads who accept the 
Christian revelation an immense proportion, including 
spirits of every class, are moved chiefly, if not exclusively, 
by the personal influence of Jesus, by the intuition, so to 
speak, which they thus attain into the manifested truth. 
The sun shines with its own lustre, and needs no evidence 
to prove its existence. But our nature is full of incon- 
sistencies. Our strongest convictions, after all, are held 
with a feeble grasp, and are liable to be wrenched from us 
by sudden assaults, most especially when they depend upon 
what in modern parlance are called subjective impressions. 
It is well, therefore, that even this strongest and deepest of 
all convictions should have outward and independent sup- 
port, that it should appeal to palpable and ascertainable 
facts, never indeed surrendering its true position in the 

493 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 



central stronghold of our spirits, but going forth when 
challenged, and examining at frequent intervals the state of 
its defences and outposts. Let us, then, very briefly con- 
sider some of those evidences which the Christian apologist 
recognizes as most important for the confirmation of 
faith. 

Here, undoubtedly, we have first to look at the evidence 
of miracles, which has been discussed by Dr. Stoughton, 
and, among all miracles, first and foremost — with which all 
other proofs of miraculous intervention stand or fall — 
the miracle of the resurrection."^ I take it in this place, 
not as it is often taken, as an antecedent evidence to 
be examined or rejected previous to examination of the 
character of our Saviour ; but as an evidence of which the 
true force is inseparably bound up with the result of that 

* Within the few last months, Steinmeyer has published a treatise on 
the histoiy of the resurrection, with reference to the latest criticisms, 
which I would commend to readers of German. Serious attempts have 
been made in England to disjoin this cardinal truth from the doctrinal 
system of St. Paul, attempts which seem passing strange on the part of 
critics who accept him as a thoroughly tioithful man, nay, as an inspired 
apostle, and who must know that he makes the resurrection the very 
centre or foundation of his teaching. Even Hegel, the very Corypheus 
of idealism, declares ' ' Die Auferstehung gehort wesentlich dem Glauben 
an ; " i. e., the resun-ection belongs essentially to the faith. See 
** Die Philosophic der Religion," p. 300. In a note on the same page, 
Hegel shows that he takes it as a real objective event : " wie alles 
Bisherige in der Weise der Wirklichkeit fiir das unmittelbare Bewuestsein 
zur ErscheinMHg gekommen, so auch diere Erhebung." 

494 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



preliminary inquiry. The mind may indeed submit to 
logical inferences drawn from undisputed or demonstrated 
facts, but it will submit reluctantly, and will, sooner or later, 
shake off its shackles, unless those inferences accord with 
its sense of moral fitness, of harmony between the outward 
manifestation of power and the inward demands of con- 
science. All moral antecedent objection to the resur- 
rection of Christ disappears when it is acknowledged that 
His character satisfies those conditions. The first apologist 
of Christianity — St. Peter at Pentecost — puts this in the 
very foreground of his argument : " God raised Him up, 
having loosed the pains of death, because it was not 
possible that He should be holden of it." It was impos- 
sible, considering the relation of the Son to the Father, and 
of the Father to the universe. The expectation, in fact, 
of the resurrection of one " approved by God " as perfect 
in holiness, such as Christians believe their Master to be, 
is actually admitted to be so natural that the most subtle 
opponents of revelation assume that it must have existed in 
the minds of the first disciples, bringing them into a state 
which prepared them to receive without questioning the 
rumours which were gradually moulded into a semblance of 
historical consistency. This theory at least proves this, — 
given the two facts of God's power and justice, and of 
Christ's nature, as acknowledged by the Christian, the 

495 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

resurrection, if proved on other grounds, will find no 
obstacle to its reception in our moral consciousness. 

But the very fact that such a hope exists, one which, if 
fulfilled, transcends all human longings, carrying with it, as 
St. Paul shows, the pledge and the only pledge of our 
personal redintegration, will but make the inquirer careful 
to prove every link in the chain of evidence. And here we 
have to remark that, so far from having that assumed ex- 
pectation. His disciples were utterly in despair after the 
crucifixion. With their Master's last breath their last hope 
departed. They treated the first accounts which reached 
them as idle, they did not believe till they had the evidence 
of their senses j " then were they glad, when they saw the 
Lord." It is a remarkable, not to say unique, combination 
of two conditions for the perfect establishment of an 
ascertainable fact, that on the one side it should be in 
perfect congruity with an eternal principle, and on the 
other that it should be witnessed by persons wholly unpre- 
pared for its occurrence, and attested under circumstances 
which make it impossible to doubt their sincerity. That the 
attestation was given, that it was confirmed by outward effects 
otherwise psychologically inexplicable, by an immediate and 
complete change in the character of the disciples, and by the 
rapid triumph of the religion so attested, these and kindred 
points you will find discussed in every treatise on Christian 

496 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



evidences : they are, in fact, not open to reasonable doubt. 
Weigh more especially the attestation of St. Paul, both as one 
who knew previously all that could be alleged against the 
belief, as one whose strong intellect and strong prejudices 
rendered him inaccessible to mere subjective impressions, 
and as a man of whose conversion no rational, no intelligible 
account has ever been given which does not involve the fact 
of a personal manifestation of Christ, and then you will 
have all that can be needed for steadfast conviction, evidence 
complete and adequate for its purpose, proving that Jesus 
was shown "to be the Son of God with power by the 
resurrection from the dead." (Rom. i.) 

With an equal interest the student of evidence will now 
turn back to the inquiry into the teaching of prophecy. 
At the outset it sufficed to know the broad fact that the 
characteristics of the coming Christ were believed by His 
contemporaries to have been announced in predictions 
which, whether of divine origin or not, unquestionably 
moulded their anticipations. He is now able to test 
their accuracy, to satisfy himself as to their origin, and 
to study them with a far deeper and more intelligent 
interest than would be possible without the previous 
appreciation of our Lord's nature. At first his attention 
will naturally be caught by separate predictions, by their 
correspondence with outward occurrences in the Gospel 

497 32 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

narration ; but as he advances in the study his whole spirit 
will be gradually absorbed in contemplation of their internal 
coherence, their unbroken continuity, their ever progressing 
development. Distinct, accurate, and in the strictest sense 
of the word evidential, those predictions are, taken sepa- 
rately and independently ; as such they are recognised by 
one and all the sacred writers — by none more fully than 
by the two who stand pre-eminent among the disciples of 
Jesus — by St. Paul, who represents the highest develop- 
ment of the intellectual forces in Christianity, the acute 
disputant, the subtle reasoner, the spiritualist philosopher, 
or, as he has been lately called, the metaphysician of 
Christianity — and by St. John, whose spirit, insphered 
in the region of love, came into nearest contact with the 
divine, who represents the very highest of all faculties, that 
of spiritual intuition. Nay, those predictions are repeatedly 
and distinctly recognised as conclusive evidences by our 
Lord Himself. But their full significance is only discerned 
when we contemplate them as parts of a mighty whole, as 
a continuous and complete testimony of the Spirit of God. 
Two lines of light traverse the realm of spiritual manifesta- 
tion, the one revealing the divine, the other the human 
characteristics of the future Saviour : the one ever expand- 
ing, but from the beginning broad, luminous, equable j the 
other advancing, so to speak, with varying progress, ever 

498 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



and anon bursting out in sudden flashes, each bringing into 
vivid Hght some event in the life, above all each event in 
the crowning work, of the Saviour. These two lines gradu- 
ally converge until they meet in the Incarnation. From 
that point of meeting the Christian goes back ; then he 
learns to combine and to comprehend their intimations. 
Under Christ's teaching, prophecy becomes to him a guiding 
light — an evidence so complete that if it stood alone he 
might dispense with other proofs, and feel it adequate for 
the support of his faith. 

You will, however, remember that besides those predic- 
tions which apply directly to our Lord's person, an inex- 
haustible treasury of predictions refer to events in the 
providential history of the world, and they, too, are strictly 
evidential. Even writers to whom the very word revelation 
is distasteful, acknowledge in the Hebrew prophets true 
seers ; that is, men Avhose spirit was in unison with the ever- 
lasting harmonies of the universe. But it is only when we 
know Christ as He reveals Himself, as the Lord of history, 
that the long series of prophetic intimations present them- 
selves in their true light to our minds. The exact explana- 
tion of each specific prediction, such as are found in Isaiah 
and Daniel, taxes and rewards the industry of students, but 
the real interest consists not in the satisfaction of a rational 
curiosity, or the bearing upon controversy, but in the help 

499 



COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE 

which is thus supplied, enabling us to realize vividly the 
presence of Christ foreordering all events so as to make 
them work together for the accomplishment of His will. 

If time allowed, I might here dwell on other topics. I 
might point out how deep thinkers, Pascal perhaps most 
powerfully, have shown that Christianity, and Christianity 
alone, fully recognises the two opposite and apparently irre- 
concilable aspects of our common humanity, its unspeakable 
misery and degradation out of God, and its capacity for 
restoration and reunion with the Divine, and, again, that it 
corresponds to an extent wholly incomprehensible, save on 
the admission of its divine origin, with those requirements of 
man's conscience and spirit which every system of philosophy 
recognises, but which one and all admit that they fail to 
satisfy. I might dwell upon the fact that between the ac- 
ceptance of the entire truth thus made known to us, and 
utter negation of the supernatural and divine, the inter- 
mediate positions long defended as tenable have been, both 
here and on the continent, all but universally abandoned by 
the representatives of modern thought. I might point out 
that together with that abandonment, and as a direct result of 
that abandonment, a dark, drear hopelessness, not merely as 
to the immediate issue of the storms which convulse the 
atmosphere we breathe as spiritual, social, and intellectual 

beings, but as to the future and abiding consequences of 

500 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



those convulsions, appears to be settling down upon men's 
minds : a hopelessness for which there is no remedy save 
that which depends upon the triumph of righteousness and 
truth, a triumph to be achieved only under the banner of 
Christ. What I have attempted to do, none can feel as I 
do how imperfectly, has been to set before you in orderly 
sequence facts within the reach of all ; facts of which the truth 
and power and far-reaching influences will be felt more and 
more in proportion to the earnestness and. sincerity of your 
own inquiry ; facts which once admitted are evidences com- 
plete in themselves, and adequate for their purpose in each 
stage of our spiritual development : evidences sufficient to 
constrain all who believe in God to believe also in the Son 
whom He has sent ; to know Him as the way, the truth, and 
the life. In His school that rational conviction, retaining 
all its clearness, will undergo a process at once of develop- 
ment and transfigurement, and become a living faith. 



SOI 



EXPLANATORY PAPER 



BY THE RIGHT REV. THE 

LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL. 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



Having been requested by the Committee of the Christian 
Evidence Society to . draw up a short paper which might 
serve as a partial introduction to the Lectures, and espe- 
cially might set forth their general plan and connexion, as 
originally designed by the Committee, I have much pleasure 
in submitting the following brief comments to the many 
readers of this valuable series. The Lectures were de- 
livered in the course of the spring in the present year, to 
large audiences, in St. George's Hall, Langham Place, and 
were specially designed to meet some of the current forms 
of unbelief among the educated classes. 

They were delivered at the request of the Christian 
Evidence Society, and represent a portion of the work 
undertaken by the Committee of that Society in the pre- 
sent year. 

As they thus stand in such close connection with our 
Society, it may not be unsuitable for me to make a few 

505 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



explanatory remarks on the Society itself, and its general 
objects, as well as on the plan of the lectures which have 
been delivered at its request, and which are now presented 
to the reader in a collected and continuous form. 

First, then, as to the Society, and its present working and 
design. 

I. The Society was established in the spring of the past 
year. It had long been felt by earnest and thoughtful 
persons, both Churchmen and Nonconformists, that some 
combined attempt ought to be made to meet in fair argu- 
ment the scepticism and unbelief which for the last few 
years have been distinctly traceable in all classes of society. 

Into all the causes of this state of things it is not now 
our object to inquire. These are, probably, many and 
various, and may defy any formal classification. It is, 
indeed, seldom that those who live in the stream and 
current of a quickly moving generation can properly 
estimate the variously combined movements around them, 
or can always very successfully refer them even to their 
more proximate causes. We may, however, very profitably, 
as thus illustrating the general design of the lectures, 
pause to advert to two or three of what would seem to be 
leading causes of this present prevalence of doubt and 
scepticism. 

We may, in the first place then, venture to express the 

506 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



opinion that it does seem to stand in some degree of 
connection with the historical criticism, or, to speak more 
exactly, with the philosophical mode of treating ancient 
history, which, especially since the time of Niebuhr, has so 
honourably marked the present and the latter half of the 
preceding generation. It was obviously impossible that a 
system which appeared to yield results judged to be 
eminently satisfactory and trustworthy in regard of the 
general history of the past, should not be applied to sacred 
history, and to the various documents which together make 
up the Holy Bible. And it has been applied, sometimes 
cautiously and reverently, and with a due regard for the 
religious convictions of Christian readers, but sometimes 
also with an eagerness and persistence which may not 
unfairly be characterized as both inconsiderate and un- 
justifiable. This method of criticism, especially in its more 
unfavourable manifestations, may certainly be specified as 
one of the earlier causes of that suspended belief in the 
historical truth of several portions of the Old and New 
Testament, which many entertain at the present ti-Tie, and 
make no scruple of avowing and justifying. 

We may also as certainly specify as a second cause 
the tendency to over-hasty generalization that has of late 
marked the rapid development of some of the natural 
sciences. From true science true religion has nothing to 

507 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



fear. But it is otherwise when results newly obtained, 
and at present, from the very circumstances of the case, 
imperfectly tested and verified, are confidently put forward ; 
and when inferences of perhaps doubtful validity are set, 
if not in actual opposition to the statements of Revelation, 
yet in such a studious juxtaposition, that comparison is 
challenged, and by consequence many an early conviction 
weakened and impaired. "We say by consequence, — for 
no acute observer of the heart and its mysteries can have 
failed to mark how^ even in minds of higher strain there 
is often a secret sympathy with the attacking party, not so 
much on the merits of the case, as from the simple fact 
that it is the attacking party; and that while on this side 
there is only the passivity of prescription, on .the other 
there is all the vigour of assault and progress. This 
obvious fact, which, — like some other mental facts of a 
similar nature, — is, we fear, proved by almost daily ex- 
perience, has not been sufficiently taken into consideration ; 
but if estimated properly, it will account for much that is 
otherwise perplexing. It will even tend to reassure us, as it 
will enable us to assign to its true though hidden reason 
much of the present startling readiness with which scientific 
inferences, supposed generally to be unfavourable to received 
views, have received at least some measure of sympathy 
and approval. It may be, too, that this latent feeling of 

508 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



sympathy with the attack will be neutralized when it is 
found that the defence is not deficient in energy or 
vigour, and when English fair play seems to suggest that 
each side should be allowed to fight it out without having 
any advantages arising from prepensions or prejudice. 
However this may be, there is no doubt that the cause 
we have specified is a real and a prevailing one. Over- 
hasty scientific generalization is certainly one of the causes 
of the present state of modern religious belief. 

One more cause we may also pause to specify, as it in- 
volves in it much that will minister comfort and reassurance. 
This cause is the eager and often impatient search for solid 
ground whereon religion and morality may be based. With 
all their faults, men are now certainly seeking for truth. 
There may be misapplications of historical criticism, there 
may be misuses and misapprehensions of the real testimony 
of science, but amid all there is clearly a searching for truth 
and firm ground. The processes of destructive criticism are 
in fact nearly over, and the difficult process of reconstruc- 
tion is commencing. The due remembrance of this will 
help us in estimating a little more calmly, and perhaps also 
a little more fairly, some of the startling phenomena pre- 
sented by the present state of religious belief. Let us, for 
example, take for a moment into consideration two remark- 
able characteristics of the present time, — first, the attempts 

509 



EXPLANATORY PAPER, 



to form a system of morality independent of revealed 
religion j and, secondly, the acceptance on the part of 
several earnest and truthful minds of such a system as 
Positivism. These really would seem to be at first sight 
two inexplicable phenomena. Both, however, are to be 
accounted for by that searching for something to rest on, 
which has just been mentioned. It has been assumed in 
the one case, far too hastily, that the uncertainties connected 
with the belief in the facts of revealed religion are so great, 
that no system of morality could be considered securely 
founded if it rested only on the Scriptures. It has been 
felt by many earnest thinkers that any such system, to be a 
true one, ought to rest solely on principles acknowledged 
to be of universal application, and on maxims that have 
received the assent of all the better part of civilized 
mankind. If the teaching of Scripture be in general 
harmony with such maxims and principles, its concurrence 
is not to be slighted ; but it is not deemed as of more 
real moment than the concurrence of any other form of 
religious teaching that has exercised a real influence over 
any large portion of the human family. Religion generally 
is accepted as a buttress to the rising edifice of morality, but 
as nothing further. The tower is being builded really with 
the desire to reach heaven; if the sequel be what it was of 
old, it may still be conceded, with all fairness, that the 

510 



EXPLANATORY PAPER, 



attempt is not made in a bad spirit. To change slightly 
the allusion, the effort is not made in the spirit of the Titans 
who piled Pelion on Ossa, but with all the earnestness and 
anxiety of hoping, enquiring, and searching, though we are 
bound to add, mistaken men. 

In the other case, though it may seem to many rash to 
say one word to mitigate the severity of the judgment that 
both is and ever will be passed on such a system as Posi- 
tivism, yet, even here, let us be just and sympathising. 
There is, no doubt, in Positivism much that is plainly 
repulsive, and really calls for severity ; still, even in this 
system, we may trace the prevailing desire to find something 
solid, something which appears to be proof to the changes 
of opinion or the fluctuation of creeds. So the attempt is 
made to secure a scientific basis, and to place thereon fact 
after fact, when each has become verified and established, 
and so to build onward — we caimot honestly say upward — 
until something like a system is so far constructed that suc- 
ceeding generations may feel induced to continue it. So 
even in this sombre and cheerless system there is, we 
believe, really at work a desire to touch ground. To 
that desire, however, it must be sorrowfully added, every 
loftier aspiration, every nobler incentive, is necessarily sacri- 
ficed. Science and scientific truth is used in a way that 
warrants the apprehension that — if such is to be the use 

5" 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



made of it — the progress of science may tend, first, to im- 
pair, and, next, to obliterate, the sense of responsibility on 
which the present and the future aUke so solemnly rest. It 
is not without reason, then, that this is dwelt gi-avely upon 
by all sober thinkers ; nor is it too much to say that this is 
now one of the gravest considerations connected with the 
advance of modem scientific investigations. The tendencies 
of such investigations certainly do appear to hinder the 
due recognition of these two momentous principles — first, 
the sense of responsibility; and, secondly, the sense of 
dependence on something higher than law, order, and 
evolution. This hindrance, we trust, is only in appearance ; 
still that appearance is accepted by many as reality, and it is 
not without reason that we are again and again reminded 
that the acceptance of the truth of the Christian creed will 
with many depend on its power of assimilating the doctrine 
of universal causation, or, to speak more precisely, of de- 
monstrating that that doctrine is itself only a form of 
a yet higher and holier truth. 

We turn, however, back again to the design and working 
of the Society. It was established to meet this growing 
scepticism, and with a due recognition of the causes w-hich 
have just been specified. It was not started, as has been 
sometimes said, with a little irony, for the purpose of 
restoring a belief in Christianity, but for the purpose of 

512 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



meeting argument with argument, and of supplying the many 
that are now fluctuating between beHef and no behef with 
sober answers and vahd arguments drawn forth anew from 
the great treasury of Christian evidences. This is the true 
design and object of the Society. Its mode of carrying out 
this design has hitherto been threefold — first, by means 
of lectures addressed to the educated ; secondly, by the 
formation of classes under competent class-leaders, for the 
instruction of those in lower grades of society who are 
exposed to the thickening dangers arising from that 
organized diflusion of infidel principles which is one of 
the saddest and most monitory signs of the present time. 
Thirdly, the Society is endeavouring to stimulate private 
study by the circulation of useful tracts, and by the offer of 
prizes to such as may be willing that their private study 
should be tested by competitive examination. All these 
three modes of carrying out its work have been adopted 
during the present year ; and, so far as can be inferred from 
the work that has been done, and from the various expres- 
sions of public opinion, with considerable success. Popular 
attention has naturally been directed more especially to the 
first of the modes specified — the lectures to the educated ; 
but it is satisfactory to state, ere we pass at once to our 
explanatory comments on the plan of these lectures, that 
the formation of classes has answered even beyond ex- 

513 33 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



pectation, and that, from the amount of the competition 
for the prizes that have been offered, examination in 
Christian evidences will form a large and most interesting 
portion of the future work of the Society. 

II. We may now turn our attention to the lectures 
that are included in the present volume — our first year's 
work. 

The number of the lectures was twelve. One of these, the 
lecture on the Internal Evidence of the Authenticity of St. 
John's Gospel, is unfortunately not included in the present 
volume, owing to the desire expressed by the learned writer 
that it should not be published. The absence is much to 
be regretted ; first, on account of the value and importance 
of the lecture; and, secondly, on account of the partial 
break which has thus been caused in the sequence of the 
lectures. 

The lectures were not delivered in the order in which 
they are here presented to the reader. The convenience of 
the active as well as distinguished men who consented to 
act as lecturers, had naturally to be consulted; adjustments 
had to be made, and interchanges of days of lecturing 
acceded to, so as to secure the continuous delivery of the 
lectures on the days specified. In this collective edition, 
however^ the proper order is restored, and may now be 
briefly explained, as some criticisms have been passed on 

514 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



the subjects of the lectures, which would certainly have 
been modified if the whole series had been delivered in 
the order originally designed. 

The first three lectures were designed to be prepara- 
tory and prelusive. They were directed against the three 
systems which are now more especially, in different ways, 
coming into collision with Christianity — Materialism and its 
theories. Pantheism, and Positivism. It was judged by 
those who sketched out the plan of the lectures, that until 
these subjects were shortly dealt with, and until the objec- 
tions against Christianity, founded upon them or derived 
from them, were briefly noticed, the evidences for Chris- 
tianity could hardly be expected to have a fair hearing. 
The internal arguments in favour of the leading truths of 
the Christian religion could scarcely be fairly estimated if 
there were to be antecedent objections of a grave and 
general character left wholly unnoticed and unanswered. 
Hence the three opening lectures : The first of these 
breaks ground by the consideration of some leading 
materialistic opinions, and especially by an exposition 
of the argument from design. It thus prepares the 
reader more fully to accept the deep truth so well and 
succinctly stated by Bishop Martensen,^' that the " world 



Christian Dogmatics, § 63. (Clark.) 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



has not merely a cosmogonic but also a creational origin," 
and that the mysterious problem of creation and life can 
''never be solved in a merely natural way, but demands a 
supernatural solution, that is, a solution through a creative 
teleology." 

The second lecture very suitably follows by a clear expo- 
sition of that great system which has of late been found to 
exercise such a fascination over thoughtful and cultivated 
minds that it becomes, to far more than we may suppose, 
the conclusion of all controversy. We allude to the system 
of Pantheism, into which of late many noble spirits have 
seemed willing to merge all their hopes and all their fears. 
Swayed to and fro, unable to accept Law for their God, 
and yet equally held back from the blessed truth that the 
God of the universe is a Person, thousands fall back upon 
the subtle and fascinating system which supplies a moving 
Principle, but withholds the blessed idea of a holy Will; 
which discloses to them a natura natw'ans^ but denies the 
existence of a loving Creator and a personal God. It 
was thus very properly provided that the lecture on this 
subject should follow the lecture on Design in Nature, as 
exhibiting the true characteristics of that modified Atheism 
which only too often becomes the refuge of men whose minds 
have been shaken by the inferences of pure materialism, or 
who may have been drawn towards the disguised forms of it 

516 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



which lurk in many of our popular treatises on the origin and 
evolution of Man. After a careful study of these two 
lectures, the thoughtful reader will be enabled ta recognize 
the true nature and force of the argument from design, 
and so will be led the better to appreciate the enduring 
validity of that great natural foundation for our belief in a 
personal God. Of the four great arguments by which man 
is permitted to rise to the knowledge of God, the argument 
from design, or, as it is technically called, the teleological 
argument, is the most important, as it, in fact, includes 
the moral argument, which, properly estimated, is only its 
subjective aspect. Apart from revelation we rise to the 
knowledge of God in two ways, by the consideration of 
ourselves, and by the contemplation of the world around 
us; what the moral argument is in the former method, 
that the teleological argument is in the latter. Hence the 
importance to the general reader of having an argument 
of such validity clearly set before him on different sides, 
and from different points of view. 

The third lecture, on Positivism, completes the first 
group, and forms, as it were, a kind of useful appendix to 
the other two. Here we have the investigation of a special 
system, — a system that professes to be based on positive 
and observed phenomena, and claims to extricate the mental 
study of man from metaphysics and abstractions, and to 

517 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



place it in the realm of the realizable and the positivej 
Such a system, though neither now prevailing to any extent, 
nor ever likely to become prevalent or popular, is still 
worthy of attention, as it stands in close connection with 
current materialistic conceptions, and suggests some instruct- 
ive contrasts to Pantheism. In the latter system we have, 
at any rate, some idea of pervading Deity ; but in Positivism, 
if we understand the system aright, God, and all conceptions 
of God, are not so much denied as simply and entirely 
ignored. If Pantheism be deemed fascinating, Positivism 
will appear to most minds utterly repellent : still it is a 
system that claims some distinguished men among its pro- 
fessed exponents, and perhaps a larger number than we 
may suppose of conscious or unconscious adherents. It 
may therefore well claim from us investigation, and, in the 
position it occupies in the order of these lectures, may 
fairly be considered to be in its right place. 

We have dwelt upon the first group of the lectures, as 
both the position and the importance of the subjects 
considered in it have seemed to require a fuller notice. 
On the remaining groups we may speak more briefly, as 
their connection and the special subjects on which they 
treat are much more self-explanatory. 

The first three lectures having, as it were, cleared the 
ground, and having demonstrated, as we believe, success- 

518 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



fully the untenable nature of the systems that have been 
placed in competition with Christianity, the two next 
lectures, which form the second group, deal with the chief 
difficulties arising from the supposed conflict between 
science and the Holy Scriptures. The first of these two 
lectures, that on Science and Revelation, enters into the 
subject generally, by showing how, on scientific consider- 
ations, a revelation was to be expected, and how, conse- 
quently, the evidences of Christianity have a strong claim 
upon the attention of every right-thinking man. The 
second of these two lectures is confined to a special but 
prerogative case, in which science and religion are supposed 
to be more particularly in opposition to each other, — viz., 
the case of miracles. Here it is necessary, not only to 
investigate generally the nature of the miraculous evidence 
to Christianity, but fairly to face the antecedent question, 
whether miracles, however defined, are not in themselves 
impossible. In facing that question, however, attention is 
rightly called to the nature of the weapons that are used 
in the conflict, and especially to the fact, so often over- 
looked, that all the assaults on the miraculous that can in 
any degree be deemed worthy of consideration, are carried 
on only with metaphysical weapons. The whole question 
really turns upon the belief in a personal God : if it be 
conceded that this belief is just and reasonable, then, as 

519 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



the writer of the lecture rightly observes, the presumed 
impossibility in reference to miracles at once melts away. 
The very idea of a free-creating God carries with it the 
possibility of new manifestations of the Divine will, whether 
in history or nature. The sustaining power of God, which 
we recognise in the form of law and orderly progress, 
changes whensoever it shall have seemed good to His holy 
will for it to pass into the creative ; His immanent workings 
are then seen in the realm of the transcendental, and the 
result is that which Pantheism, Naturalism, and all similar 
systems must, if consistent, regard as impossible, a new 
movement from the Divine centre, an epiphany of a creative 
and overruling will, a wonder, a miracle. When Spinosa 
said that God and nature are one from eternity to eternity, 
he was quite consistent in adding that there is no transcend- 
ental beginning, and that miracles are impossible ; but for 
any one who believes in a personal God, or who believes 
nature to be what it is, — not a system eternally fixed, but 
a system passing through a development characterised by 
design, — to deny the possibility of miraculous interpositions, 
reason and consistency must certainly, in this particular, be 
suspended or sacrificed. 

The third group of lectures, which may be regarded as 
subdivided into two portions, naturally connects itself with, 
and follows, the subjects just specified. After the general 

520 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



consideration of difficulties connected with religion and 
Christianity, the attention ot the reader is now directed 
to the more special difficulties connected with the Holy 
Scriptures. In the first portion of the group the subject of 
the Gradual Development of Revelation, or, as the title 
was re-defined by the lecturer, the Gradual Nature of 
Divine Revelation, properly occupies the first place. It 
is followed by a lecture in which there will be found a 
careful consideration of some special instances of difficulty 
connected with the historical portions especially of the Old 
Testament. These two lectures were to have been followed 
by a consideration of the moral difficulties that have been 
felt in reference to some parts of the Old Testament ; but 
for this subject, which, if properly treated, would have 
probably claimed a large share of attention, the Committee 
were not able to secure the services of a lecturer for the pre- 
sent year. This is to be regretted, as there is no subject con- 
nected with the Holy Scriptures which at the present time 
more requires a candid and sober consideration ; no discus- 
sion which, if fairly conducted, would do more to remove 
many honestly felt difficulties, and to many minds to bring 
probably lasting reassurance. Without presuming to enter, 
however slightly, into such a subject in a discursive paper 
like the present, we will venture to make this general re- 
mark, which perhaps may be found helpful, viz., that in 

'521 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



dealing with all such difficulties we must carefully distinguish 
between those connected with Divine workings, and those 
connected with human actions. The former are, in their 
real nature, utterly beyond the finite judgment of man. All 
that we may presume to consider is the way or manner in 
which they are brought before us by the writer, and all that 
we can either safely or wisely subject to criticism are the 
aspects or colouring under which they are presented. We 
really are not competent to sketch out theories of Divine 
government, even in the simplest matters, and with all the ad- 
vantages of contemporaneous knowledge ; nay, in the lives 
of ourselves and those around us, there are, as has been 
wisely observed, innumerable events of sorrow, and countless 
circumstances of suffering, of which the economic purpose 
cannot even be guessed at in our present state of knowledge, 
and of the exact purposes of which no sober or reverent 
thinker ever dreams of attempting to form any estimate what- 
ever. It is thus utterly out of the question to attempt to 
consider the difficulties connected with the Divine work- 
ings, except as to the manner of their representation by the 
human narrator, whose human powers were the instruments 
by which God was pleased to communicate the outward facts 
of those workings to the children of men. In regard of the 
Divine workings themselves, especially when they come 
before us in the general forms of judgments on individuals 

522 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



or nations, all we may presume safely to do is to regard 
them as manifestations of Divine righteousness in judicial 
relations or contradistinctions to the sins or transgressions 
of men. 

In reference, however, to the moral difficulties connected 
with recorded human actions, we may venture to go farther, 
and to take into consideration the fact already referred to 
of the gradual nature of God's revelation, and all the 
modifying thoughts which such a fact brings with it. 

It is thus not only right, but necessary, to accept as our 
guide in all such investigations or discussions this sober 
spiritual principle, — that the Old Testament, must be inter- 
preted from the stand-point of the New Testament, and 
under the fuller light which is afforded by the later dispen- 
sation. If we cling to these two great truths — first, that the 
history of the past, as we find it in the Old Testament, ever 
involves a reference to final purposes ; and, secondly, that 
every attempt to realize the deeper significance of that 
history must use Christianity as its basis — we shall probably 
find our way in this difficult domain of speculation as far and 
as safely as the finite powers of man can be deemed capable 
of advancing; we shall see as clearly as we can be per- 
mitted to see, when poor human reason is endeavouring to 
survey the adorable mysteries that surround the recorded 
workings of the manifold wisdom of God. 

523 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



The second portion of this third group is more especially- 
devoted to difficulties connected with the New Testament, 
the first place being naturally reserved for the questions 
relating to the life of our Lord and the Gospel narrative. 
The first lecture is thus directed to a consideration of 
the Mythical Theories of Christianity; the second to the 
Evidential Value of St. Paul's Epistles. As has already 
been mentioned, the lecture on St. John's Gospel, which 
would have occupied a position between the two just 
specified, owing to the request of the writer, has not been 
published, and the series in this part of it has in conse- 
quence suffered. 

The two remaining lectures, viz., that on Christ's Teach- 
ing and Influence on the World, and that which follows it, 
on the Completeness and Adequacy of the Evidences of 
Christianity, form the last group, and worthily conclude the 
interesting series. A third lecture on the additional strength 
which is brought to the evidences of Christianity by the 
convergence of various lines of independent testimony, was 
intended to have been added to this group, but for this 
important and comprehensive subject, as in the case of 
another subject recently mentioned, the Committee were 
not able to procure a lecturer. 

The series, as above described, is now commended to 
the thoughtful reader. It will be found to be marked 

524 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



throughout with learning, candour, and we beHeve also with 
gentleness and sympathy. On this last characteristic we 
ourselves lay great stress. If we would reclaim the wander- 
ing, or confirm the wavering, it is not by hard words and 
unkindly imputations, but by the expression of that love 
and gentleness which an apostle reminds us are numbered 
among the fruits of the Spirit. We must regard ourselves 
as far as possible in their places, endeavour to see as they 
see, and feel as they feel^ and then it may be permitted 
to us to return from our charitable quest, bringing back 
the friendly wanderers with us, and ourselves sharing some 
portion of that holy joy which is felt in heaven and in earth 
when the doubter is led back to belief, and the lost is found. 
This rightful characteristic of all true Christian controversy 
is not, we believe, anywhere wanting in this volume, and we 
thus, with fullest confidence, commend it to the considera- 
tion of all who love the truth, and humbly seek it in history, 
science, and theology. 

Lastly, we may call attention to the encouraging fact, 
that in this great work good men have agreed to forget 
minor differences. Among the distinguished men whose 
independent lectures are now, for convenience, gathered 
together in a common volume, are members of the Church 
of England and members of other religious communities. 
It is long that this co-operation has existed in the circu- 

525 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



lation of the Holy Scriptures ; it is recently that it has 
again appeared in the effort to present those Scriptures in 
their most accurate form to the English reader ; it is now 
again happily exemplified in the present attempt to de- 
fend and maintain the truth as it is in Jesus Christ our 
Lord. 

These things are of good augury. Though there may be 
dissensions, sad and pitiful, within the Church, and assaults 
made upon it from without, often sadly characterized with 
the marks of political strife, yet we may thank God that in 
efforts such as the present, and in the calm and serenity of 
studies such as those which this volume commends, a true 
union has been felt and acted on. Yes, it is a cause for 
thankfulness and rejoicing that the love of Christ is more 
and more binding us together in companionships of high 
duty and gentle sympathy, and that reverence for His Holy 
Word, His Word of Life and Truth, is making us feel that 
our work is a common one, and that as we have in com- 
mon freely received, so it is a blessed thing in commo;i 
freely to give. 

We may humbly pray then that God's gracious favour may 
rest on this Course of Lectures, and may be permitted to 
bear a blessing to those that read it. May they feel anew 
convinced in heart and spirit that we have not " followed 
cunningly devised fables," but that in the Holy Scriptures of 

526 



EXPLANATORY PAPER. 



the Old and New Testament there is Hght and truth, even 
because they bring us nearer to Him who is the Truth, 
as He is the Way and the Life, for evermore. 

C. J. GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL. 

July 19, 187 1. 



NOTES TO 
MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



NOTES. 



ON POSITIVISM. 

1 " Does any one fancy that he sees a sohd cube ? It is easy to show 
that the solidity of the figure, tlie relative position of its faces and edges 
to each other, are inferences of the spectator — no more conveyed to his 
conviction by the eye alone than they would be if he were looking at a 
painted representation of a cube. The scene of nature is a picture with- 
out depth of substance, no less than the scene of art ; and in the one 
case, as in the other, it is the mind which, by an act of its own, discovers 
that colour and shape denote distance and solidity. Most men are un- 
conscious of this perpetual habit of reading the language of the external 
world, and translating as they read. The draughtsman, indeed, is com- 
pelled, for his purposes, to return back in thought from the solid bodies 
M'hich he has inferred, to the shapes of surface which he really 
sees. He knows that there is a mask of theory over the whole face of 
nature, if it be theory to infer more than we see. ■ But other men, 
unaware of this masquei^ade, hold it to be a fact that they see cubes 
and spheres, spacious apartments, and winding avenues. And these 
things are facts to them, because they are unconscious of the mental 
operation by which they have penetrated nature's disguise. . . . 

"Our sensations require ideas to bind them together ; namely, ideas of 
space, time, number, and the like. If not so bound together, sensations 
do not give us any apprehension of things or objects. All things, all 
objects, must exist in space and in time — must be one or many. Now 
space, time, number, are not sensations or things. They are some- 
thing different from, and opposed to, sensations and things. We have 

531 



NOTES. 

termed them ideas. It may be said they are relations of things, or of 
sensations. But granting this form of expression, still a relation is not 
a thing or a sensation ; and therefore we must still have another and 
opposite element, along with our sensations. . . , 

** We are often told that such a thing is a fact — a fact, and not a theory, 
— with all the emphasis which, in speaking or writing, tone or italics 
or capitals can give. We see from what has been said, that when this is 
urged, before we can estimate the truth, or the value of the assertion, 
we must ask to whom is it a fact? what habits of thought, what previous 
information, what ideas does it imply, to conceive the fact as a fact ? 
Does not the apprehension of the fact imply assumptions which may 
with equal justice be called theory, and which are perhaps false theory ? 
in which case the fact is no fact. Did not the ancients assert it as a 
fact, that the earth stood still, and the stars moved ? and can any fact 
have stronger apparent evidence to justify persons in asserting it em- 
phatically than this had?" — Whewelfs Philosophy of the Inductive 
Sciences^ 2nd ed., vol. i., p. 42, seq. 

That the solidity of figures is in truth given by mental judgment, has 
been often proved experimentally ; see for examples, Huxley's Ele- 
mentary Physiology, Lesson x., 13 — 16. The experiment with a coin, 
lens and pin, p. 259, is easy as well as conclusive, but Wheatstone's 
Pseudoscope more surprising to most observers. Compare on this 
curious subject Brewster's Natural Magic, Letter v.. 

^ It is important to bear in mind that, from an admitted incompetency 
of our faculties to knotv the absolute, we cannot infer an impossibility of 
knowing its existence. To know that a thing is, and to know what it is, 
are two totally distinct degrees and sorts of knowledge. The moment 
this distinction is stated, every one sees its truth ; but many persons 
omit stating it to themselves when they reason upon these difficult 
subjects. 

Ravaisson, after giving a brief account of Herbert Spencer's opinion, 
goes on to say : ' ' Comment il y a, au fond de toute connaissance, un 
absolu, auquel correspond, comme son oppose, le relatif, c'est ce qu'eta- 
blissait, il y a plus de vingt siecles, contre une doctrine deja regnante 
alors de relativite et de mobilite universelles, la dialectique platonicienne, 

532 



NOTES. 

qui fraya le chemin a la metaphysique. Elle faisait plus : elle moc trait 
que par cet absolu seul les relations sont intelligibles, parce qu'il est la 
mesure par laquelle seule nous les estimons. La metaphysique, entre 
les mains de son immortel fondateur, fit davantage encore : elle montra 
que cet absolu, par lequel I'intelligence mesure le relatif, est I'intelfc- 
gence meme. C'est ce que redisait Leibniz, lorsque, a cette assertion, 
renouvelee de la scolastique par Locke, qu'il n'etait rien dans I'intelli- 
gence qui d'abord n'eut ete .dans le sens, il repondait : " sauf I'intelli- 
gence, " et que, avec Aristote, il montrait dans I'intelligence la mesure 
superieure du sens." — RappOTt, p. 66. 

Ravaisson then gives interesting extracts from Sophie St. Germain, 
and proceeds to show how Comte, without admitting any self-contem- 
plating intelligence, and thus inferring the possibility of an Absolute, did 
in fact pursue the idea of Unity, and extended this idea to the universe, 
— a principle which, if fully grasped, must be fatal to Positive views. 
" D'accord maintenant avec Platon, Aristote, Leibniz, il declarait que 
I'ensemble etant le resultat et I'expression d'une certaine unite, a laquelle 
tout concourt et se co-ordonne et qui est le but ou tout marche, c'est 
dans cette unite, c'est dans le but, c'est dans la fin ou cause finale qu'est 
le secret de I'organisme. " — Rapport, p. 76. 

A special interest attaches to the work of Ravaisson as an authorita- 
tive French rating of the philosophic exchange between England and 
France. It is almost unnecessary to refer for a less abstract account of 
these relations to the widely known writings of M. Taine. 

3 It should have been stated in the text, as it was in the delivered 
lecture, that these o^^uestions were not forgotten by the eminent Professor, 
The passages referred to will be found in his eloquent address on the 
" Scientific use of the Imagination," p. 47, seq., or in his volume of 
collected Essays, p. 163, seq. The reader may observe that, both in 
Professor Tyndall's pages and two sentences back in this lecture, De- 
velopment is spoken of as a process or law in operation. The various 
kinds of philosophy which may be engrafted on such a law are severally 
determined by whatever reply is given to the questions above suggested. 
It would seem inappropriate here to state the possible relations between 
a law of development and such consequent (or inconsequent) philosophies. 

533 



NOTES. 

Those who wish to consider them the writer may refer to his little 
volume entitled " Right and Wrong," for a brief discussion of this sub- 
ject, and more particularly for the results to natural theology. 

The following German sketch of an evolution-philosophy may not be 
without interest: — " Vermoge einer ewigen Kreisbewegung entstehen 
als Verdichtungen der Luft unzahlige Welten, himmlische Gottheiten, 
in deren Mittelpunkt die cylinderformige Erde ruht, unbewegt wegen 
des gleichen Abstandes von alien Punkten der Himmelskugel, Die Erde 
hat sich aus einem urspriinglich fliissigen Zustande gebildet. Aus dem 
Feuchten sind unter dem Einfluss der Warme in stufenweise Entwickel- 
ung die lebenden Wesen hervorgegangen. Auch die Landthiere waren 
anfangs fischartig und haben erst mit der Abtrocknung der Erdober- 
flache ihre jetzige Gestalt gewonnen. Die Seek soil Anaximander als 
luftartig bezeichnet haben." 

Anaximander of Miletus was bom about B.C. 6io. Consequently he 
ranks early among European theorizers on development. The extract 
is from Ueberweg's Grundriss, t, i, p. 40. Cf. Plutarch de Placit. v. 
19, and Sympos viii. qu. 8, with Euseb. Prsep. Evang. i. 8. 

* The sight of a dualism apparently insoluble never fails to suggest 
some such questions as these : Was it always so ? will it be so always ? 
and were I at the centre of the universe, should I see it so now ? 

There are three possible ways of conceiving otherwise : i, by reducing 
mind to matter ; 2, by reducing matter to mind ; 3, by comprehending 
both under a higher unity. 

We need only write down these issues for common sense to perceive 
that Nos. I and 2 arise from, and end in, one-sided speculation, A 
man who lives shut up amongst machinery is apt to think of his own 
mind as a machine. Great chemists have ere now taken the human 
stomach for a laboratory, and were slow in awal<;ening to those physi- 
ological facts which put the vital processes of assimilation in a nobler 
and truer light. Comte began by reducing all sciences to mathematical 
elements. Afterwards he discovered that to explain a higher order of 
things by a lower is the essence of materialism. 

To a meditative spirit, the inner world is nearer than the outer ; and 
therefore the evidence of its reality is stronger by wanting the weakness 

534 



NOTES. 

of a second link. But active life brings home to us the existence of 
both ; we suffer by defying or neglecting the laws of either ; and pain 
and sorrow are often the advanced guard of much stern unyielding 
truth. In a world where we all endure the friction of things external, 
it is hard not to believe in objective as well subjective realities. 

The truth is, that the primary question belongs to the practical reason, 
and can be settled by no other criterion. There is a philosophical maxim 
that we can never speak of the Divine univocally, but only by analogy, 
figure, or similitude ; the cause being that all attributes belonging to the 
Infinite require words which, if taken literally, must land us in self-con- 
tradiction. How vivid an idea do we gain of Omniscience or Omnipo- 
tence by saying that it is "a circle of which the. centre is everywhere, 
the circumference nowhere." And what signifies the obvious inconsis- 
tency ? Deny the Infinite, try to find a place for its centre or circum- 
ference, and the inconsistency remains, together with a host of absurd 
consequences. When of two hypotheses both cannot, but one must be 
true, and either position lands us in logical inconsistency, it is easy to 
see that our theoretical understanding will never clear up the inexplicable 
issue. A rule by which we live and act becomes the surest touchstone 
of truth or falsehood. 

Let us see whether the two worlds in which we live can be practically 
treated as one. Suppose a bivouac into which a shell descends, certain 
in another moment, by physical law, to explode. Is the moral law — the 
effort of this man or that man to escape — equally certain ? Arguing 
abstractedly, most people would hold it so, yet we know that the fact 
lies otherwise. There is a fatalism among soldiers — " every bullet has 
its billet" — as there is among nurses who believe that every epidemic 
must kill its destined prey. One may have trained himself to 
wish for death, another is indifferent, a third so undecided that he 
leaves the event to a doctrine of chances, a fourth is simply capricious. 
Each by a course of life and action has made or modified his present 
moment for choice, and any one may or may not draw back from the 
coming peril. Had the falling shell been a splash from a carriage wheel, 
every man would have shrunk from it. The latter risk is too simple for 
human ponderings or human self-direction, and in such cases people act 
by a proximate straightforward instinct. 

535 



NOTES. 

But on what principles must he who shrinks from either risk really 
proceed ? He is sure that his own movements are in his own power 
and contingent. He is equally sure that the movements of shell or mud 
are absolutely determined in calculable curves, and not at all contingent. 
Acting on these two conjoint data, he succeeds in avoiding death or dirt ; 
and, whatever theorists may write, he would have perilled his success by 
acting otherwise. Nay, what is much to our purpose, all theoretical 
men would themselves act upon the like assumption in all cases of 
practical consequence and emergency. 

Suppose dualism banished from the world in fact as well as in theory, 
the problems of education ought to be as demonstrable as those of 
geometry or chemical experiment. The paths of men and of comets 
being equally calculable, because equally subject to uniform law, how 
comes it that biography and history abound in the records of grossly 
falsified predictions ? Let the courses of nations be tabulated, and states- 
manship is made easy. We must owe it to some egregious oversight 
that criminal punishments are not invariably deterrent. Perhaps the 
law of the strongest motive has been neglected ; if so, re-enact the code 
of Draco, and virtue will become universal. Till then the supposition 
must continue only an unverified hypothesis. 

If we go back to our starting-point, and ask, can the practical dualism 
be reduced to a higher unity ? our answer must confess a present con- 
dition of ignorance. We are so[^far from knowing what constitutes the 
thing we call matter, or what the entity we feel v/ithin us — our soul or 
mind — really is, that we cannot tell how they act and react on each 
other. We fail in tracing our own sensations from their outward ante- 
cedents to their impression on our consciousness ; and, vice versa, we 
cannot follow our energies from the springs of our volitions outward. 
While thus baffled, the longed-for unity floats before our inward eye like 
a dim vision of that intuitive faculty which pronounces subject and 
object to be ultimately identical, or as a revelation of that religious faith 
which accepts the incomprehensible, and reposes in the bosom of God. 

' Since Comte's time it has been shown that mental development is no 
very difficult process, provided we assume that several principles which 
consciousness distinguishes and sometimes places in antagonism, may be 

536 



NOTES. 

treated as equivalents, and be resolved into each other interchangeably. 
For example, we have been apt to reverence those vi^ho suffered the loss 
of all things rather than accept the Expedient as the Right, and who died 
resolute in disallowing the rule of policy to be pleaded in foro con- 
scientice. We have also in common parlance asserted a distinction between 
these two principles, while holding that the one claims the other for its 
assured attendant. Honesty, we said, is the best policy ; and we never 
meant thereby that thorough policy is the best policy. What we did 
mean was that a regard to expediency fails of the success which a straight- 
forward observance of right deserves, and will at last obtain. But to make 
mental development easy, antitheses must appear fluent, the noble be 
convertible with the useful, the human with the merely animal. Thus, 
when Comte adored Clotilde, and Dante immortalized Beatrice, they 
rehearsed for a millionth time the loves of preadamite plants. Cole- 
ridge used to maintain that the test of a philosophy was its ultimate 
coincidence with common sense. In the theories under consideration, 
right is philosophically resolved into the greater happiness of the greater 
number, and this equivalent exactly coincides with the common sense of 
starving thinkers who are possessed by a fixed idea that the happiness 
of the impoverished many is promoted by an opportune pillage of the 
wealthy few. 

It is less easy to verify mental development than to theorize upon it, yet 
verification may not be impossible ! If disbelief in a future life, denial 
of responsibility, duty, and morality, as opposed to expediency, make 
sufficient way in the world, and if practice harmonize with speculation, 
progress may become more evidently regress, and Man be proved a brute 
animal at last. The promising events in France are patent to every one ; 
a less known, but still more encouraging fact, which we learn on scien- 
tific authority, is that certain Basuto tribes have lately adopted the (to 
them) novel custom of cannibalism. 

Pending the hoped-for verification, if an identity of human with animal 
nature be accepted as provisionally true, it may be as well to anticipate 
a few of its logical consequences. Eating the flesh of our instinctive 
congeners ought positively to be discountenanced ; or, as men and women 
are simply animal, all carnivorous human beings should on compulsion 
become cannibals. Despotism being the form of government adopted 

537 



NOTES. 

by us with general applause, as regards the animal kingdom, it cannot 
be too soon transferred to our own mismanaged nationalities. In a 
word, our practices in reference to men, women, beasts, fishes, birds, 
and reptiles, ought to be made uniform. Above all, the new school- 
boards should be charged with the education of our poor relations, and 
the linguistic professors of Oxford and Cambridge be instructed to use 
every effort for the promotion of a universal language. Charity may be 
thought by some to begin at home, therefore a commencement may be 
made with the domesticated irrationals, finches, spaniels, cats, hackneys, 
sheep, mules, all asses, all pigs, and all monkey favourites. It is just 
possible that volatile creatures unaccustomed to habits of reflection 
(some tribes of light-minded birds, for example) may find abstract ideas 
and declarative sentences a little difficult. Yet, after all, it need not be 
such a long step in the case of contemplative owls ; and we may then 
apply the old proverb, " II n'y a que le premier pas qui coute. " At all 
events, the "Simious process," so successful in our world of fashion, "will 
be likely to suffice with every well-disposed chimpanzee ; the circle of 
knowledge will continually widen until the world of animals becomes 
identified with the world of man. Then, but not till then, the astonished 
psychologist may cease his useless labours, and record the inauguration 
of a new era by acknowledging 

" Omnia jam fient fieri quae posse negabam ;" 

or, still more conclusively, 

" Thinking is but an idle waste of thought. 
And nought is everything, and everything is nought." 



ON SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 

* In an answer to this lecture by "Julian," it is replied that *' Belief 
is the easiest thing possible for weak and ignorant minds." But Julian 
by belief means acquiescence ; and every church-goer is aware that the 
worthlessness of mere acquiescence is constantly being urged upon them 
from the pulpit. It holds the same relation to faith that respectability — 
i.e., acquiescence in the ordinary standard of morality — holds to holi- 

538 



NOTES. 

ness. The subject is too difficult to be discussed adequately in a note ; 
but in my first Bampton Lecture I have shown how belief, though gained 
by a struggle, is equally possible for the unlearned and the learned, but 
in every case it has to be won by an effort (Mai. xi. 12). 

' "Julian" asserts that there ought not to be any difficulty. "There 
ought not to be the least shadow of doubt whether a given book is from 
God or not" (p. 5) : " If the handwriting of Jehovah in the Scriptures be 
doubtful, it cannot be divine." But, as Bishop Butler has shown in his 
" Analogy," there are no difficulties, as regards Revelation, different in 
kind from those which we daily encounter in common life. "Julian's " easy 
assertions involve a tremendous difficulty ; for what he virtually affirms 
is that God ought to have acted, in matters of religion, in an entirely 
different way from that in which He has acted in the ordinary constitu- 
tion of this world. The whole question turns upon something quite as 
much out of "Julian's" depth as it is out of mine ; namely, what was 
God's purpose in creating man. By the study of "the constitution and 
course of nature," and of what is said in Holy Scripture, I arrive at the 
conclusion that God has, for some wise purpose, been pleased to place 
man here in a state of discipline. Such a state implies the existence of 
difficulties ; the greatness and degree of these difficulties we can know 
solely by experience, being able only to guess at the reasons which have 
made a state of probation necessary for us. But the difficulties must not 
be insuperable ; for if they were, then this present state would be a dis- 
cipline no longer. 

8 Mr. Darwin, in his " Descent of Man" (i. 201 — 206}, enumerates the 
several stages through which man is supposed to have passed, of which 
the first stage is an imaginary " group of animals, resembling in many 
respects the larv^ of our present Ascidians, which diverged into two 
great branches— the one retrograding in development, and producing 
the present class of Ascidians, the other rising to the Vertebrata. " He 
further describes these Ascidians as "hardly appearing like animals, and 
consisting of a simple, tough, leathery sack, with two small projecting 
orifices." I must own that in Mr. Darwin's book I can find no proof 
either of the degradation of the present race of Ascidians or of the de- 

53.9 



NOTES. 

velopment of their cousins, whom Mr. Darwin has summoned into ex- 
istence to serve his purpose, into apes. The work is full of interesting- 
facts and ingenious speculations, but the speculations can scarcely be 
said to have consistency enough to merit the name even of a theory. 

9 If this struggle existed, it seems unaccountable that we do not find 
creatures in every stage of evolution. We must suppose that these 
Ascidian larvoe existed by millions — at all events, many thousand species 
of animals exist, all according to this theory, evolved from them ; and, 
as many have failed and become our present Ascidians, and others were 
content to remain as they were, the number of possible starters in this 
race must have been vast. Reasonably, then, we should expect to find 
creatures in every stage of progress, and at the head numbers pressing 
closely on man. Instead of this, we find an empty space between each 
several order, and that between man and the animal second in the race 
is enormous. "^ The difference between the mind of the lowest man 
and that of the highest animal is immense " (Darwin, i. 104). 

10 A monkey must walk, and does so quite as frequently as man, but 
he walks very ill. "The gorilla runs with a sidelong shambling gait, 
but more commonly progresses by resting on its bent hands. The long- 
armed apes occasionally use their arms like crutches : . . . yet they 
move awkwardly, and much less securely than man " (Darwin, i. 143). 
Now the theory of revolution would require that, before men and 
monkeys separated from some common ancestor, their configuration was 
the same. How and when did the hands become feet, or, vice vej'sd, 
the feet hands ? 

11 I do not think that "Julian" can have observed this note. For he 
retorts upon me that dogs, monkeys, and jackdaws have a conscience, and 
that what I deduce from it as regards men, would justify a similar con- 
clusion as regards cats and dogs. But I had already pointed out that 
whatever appearance of the higher moral qualities is to be observed in 
animals is apparently the result of contact with man. It is part of the 
present constitution of things that certain animals have been domes- 
ticated, and over these the "dominion" given to man (Gen. i. 28) is 

540 



NOTES. 

very large. I cannot see how any animal could be domesticated if it 
Were quite incapable of quasi-moral qualities. I see then no difficulty 
in a domestic animal having a sort of conscience : without it a dog 
could scarcely be faithful. And note, too, that this rudimentary con- 
science in a dog implies responsibility in it quite as much as man's more 
perfect conscience does in man. The dog's responsibility is to his 
master ; to whom is his master responsible ? Still, as regards these 
rudiments of conscience, I cannot see any real proof for more than a 
very curious influence of man's qualities upon those of animals brought 
into contact with him. With Mr. Darwin (i. 89) I hold that "man 
only can with certainty be ranked as a moral being ; " and that as re- 
gards conscience "man differs profoundly frcm the lower animals" [ib.) 
I do not hold, however, as "Julian" imagines, that conscience is an un- 
erring guide. The exact contrary is implied in Matt. vi. 23, Conscience 
needs more than itself to guide men aright. 

^2 "Julian" considers that I must be "one of those who believe a stop 
occurs in the middle of the second verse of Gen. i., which severs the 
preadamite world from the world as it now is." I answer that I am 
one of those who know a little Hebrew, and I am therefore aware 
that the verb rendered was in verse 2 is not a copula, but means con- 
tinued existence. As regards the geologic notions ascribed to me by 
"Julian," I can only express my regret that scientific men should persist 
in ascribing to theologians mere nonsense. Nothing is easier than to slay 
men of straw, but is it worth the trouble ? I would recommend him to 
read a discussion upon the Mosaic record in the last chapter of [Mr, 
Capes'] " Reasons of Returning to the Church of England." He would 
then see that the opinions of theologians are not so puerile as he 
supposes. 



ON MIRACLES. 

13 The publishers have asked me whether I have any remarks to 
make on "Julian's" Reply. A few lines will be sufficient for all I 
have to say. 

541 



AZOTES. 

"Julian" quotes (page i6) a sentence within inverted commas, as 
mine, which the reader will in vain search for in my Lecture. 

He, on page 17, attributes to me, for the purpose of exciting ridi- 
cule, a statement which I never dreamed of making. Yet he adds : 
"The words are Dr. Stoughton's, and you may read them for six- 
pence." 

He concedes the point maintained in the first twenty-six pages of 
my Lecture, by remarking: "We do not say that miracles are im- 
probable or impossible." 

Although I distinctly explain that my argument in the remainder 
of the Lecture is confined to the miracles ascribed to Christ, "Julian " 
simply indulges in an attack on the authenticity and genuineness of 
the Pentateuch. He concludes by saying: "The New Testament 
stands on no better foundation, although we need not enter on that 
question now. " Most people will think this was the very question on 
which "Julian" ought to have entered, in answer to a Lecture on 
" The Miraculous Evidences of Christianity." 

Exception has been taken to what I have said respecting remarkable 
coincidences between natural events and historical facts (p. 200). Some 
of my remarks, as the foot-note indicates, were suggested by one of the 
most thoughtful of modern Continental divines. I therefore subjoin tire 
following passage :— 

"There is a mysterious harmony between the natural and the moral, 
between facts of nature and facts of history, manifest in what we call the 
' wonderful ' {mirahile), as distinct from what is properly called the 
* miraculous ' {miraculum). While the miracle, properly speaking, 
implies a violation of the laws of nature, the wonderful, which is closely 
connected with it, is such a coincidence and working together of nature 
and history as reveals a supernatural result to the religious perceptions, 
while the natural explanation still holds good for the understandinf. 
The march of Napoleon into Russia, pregnant with results, and the 
severe winter ; the invincible Armada of Philip the Second, and the 
sudden storm [afflavit deus et dissiparit eos), serve as examples of the 
' wonderful ' in the sense referred to. There is in these things a sur- 
prising and unaccountable harmony of nature and history, and yet all is 

542 



NOTES. 

natural ; no law is broken, but the coincidence is inexplicable. Won- 
ders such as these continually present themselves to us, both in the 
world at large and in the lives of individuals. There is, generally 
speaking, an unaccountable power of nature which plays its part in the 
historical and moral complications of human life ; and it cannot escape 
the notice of the careful observer that wonderful coincidences often 
occur^ which to reason may appear only as an extraordinary, inexpli- 
cable chance ; to the poet as a profound play of the spirit of the world, 
and an active presence of a divine phantasy in the world's progress ; — 
combinations which lie beyond the range of rational computation, and 
which, like genii, scorn the narrow lav^s of human knowledge ; — but in 
which the Christian discerns the finger of God. But he who tiTily re- 
cognizes the finger of God in these strange coincidences must be led on 
to a recognition of the actually miraculous. The wonderful is only the 
half-developed, unperfected miracle. The wonderful possesses that 
ambiguous character, half chance, half providence, half natural, half 
divine, just because the coincidence of the holy and the natural is 
external only ; and faith mvist still demand a relation wherein nature 
and freedom — separate in the usual course of events — shall not only seek 
one another in wonderful configurations, shall hot only approach one 
another, but be immediately and essentially united ; faith must still long 
for an unequivocal sign, of which it can say. Here is God, and not 
nature. This sign is given in the sacred history of Christ ; a sign which 
is spoken against, and which is set for the fall of many, and for the 
rising again of many. " — Martenseii's " Christian Dogmatics,'''' p. 222. 



ON MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

14 The following quotation from Mr. Lecky, who is a witness of the 
most unexceptionable character, sets forth in a striking light the solitary 
grandeur of the character of Christ as it has been depicted in the 
Gospels. ' ' It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an 
ideal character which throughout all the changes of eighteen centuries 
has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love ; has shown 
itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and con- 

543 



NOTES. 

ditions ; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the 
strongest incentive to its practice ; and has exercised so deep an influence 
that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of 
active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all 
the disquisitions of philosophers, and all the exhortations of moralists. 
This has, indeed, been the well-spring of vi^hatever is best and purest in 
the Christian life. Amid all the sins and failings, amid all the priest- 
craft and persecution and fanaticism that has defaced the Church, it has 
preserved in the example and character of its Founder an enduring prin- 
ciple of regeneration." — Lecky's "History of Morals," vol. ii., p. 9. 

Mr. Lecky distinctly admits that it is an historical fact that the Christ 
of the Gospels has exerted a power compared with which that of all 
characters, whether real or mythical, has been inconsiderable. A true 
philosophy must account for this unique power possessed by Jesus 
Christ. If the character is a fiction, why is it that it has exerted an 
influence compared with which all other fictions have been feebleness ? 
If Jesus Christ was a great man only, why "has He done more to 
regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers, and all 
the exhortations of moralists " ? Why has He left immeasurably behind 
Him all other great men who have ever lived ? The historical truth of 
the Divine character portrayed in the Gospels adequately accounts for 
this mighty influence. Nothing else does. A character which leaves 
every other human character indefinitely behind it, must belong to the 
supernatural, not to the natural, order of things. It is a moral and 
spiritual miracle. To suppose that such a character has been generated 
by the slow and gradual action of natural laws, contradicts alike the 
acts of history and the principles of philosophy. Nature recognizes 
no mighty leaps in her order of production. 



H 15/ 82 



Watson & Hazell, Printers, London and Aylesbury. 

544 







4"" 



b « « 






.4; 














^MUmAc/^J'^ ^?-i iTr a p^^syall^** w Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 

^ O > « r^^Sn^^ * Neutralizing agent: IVlagnesium Oxide 

*a 3p "^j^ * ^^^^^T^^l Treatment Date: August 2005 

o^'^riv JO"' ^ ♦»,•••* ^ PreservationTechnologies 

'q^ (y ^ t • O^ \^ ^ A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

* "Ok A^ */v^<^/i*<» *^ ^4/ 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 

» V^' (724)779-2111 








Cranberry Township. PA 1 6066 




-ov*' : 




.HO* 







b « « 




• y o 




^ <^^ -'ccOvVa^ ^ a-^ '^^ 



5^^ 





4? »I,*i' "^ 












• I "I 



.-r* ^' 







i'« 




»o 



•^olf 




.H<?«. 





*>o 










^M^<i 















=j 





